How about another limericks game?
More seriously, how about a revival of Carpe Diem?
More seriously, how about a revival of Carpe Diem?
Hmm, not convinced by Carpe Diem, though I can't really think of anything else. Anyone got something fresh and new?
I've got this salad.
I'd still like a game of Gallifrey Crescent.
New game
Bob the dog (or someone posing as him) seems to have seized the day with Sabogy, but the ruleset is unexplained and the opening move is, to say the least, combative.
I'd like a Headlines game... I know Stevie has just started one on Orange, but that's people-based. How have we played them before? Like Cheddar Headlines?
Sabogy
It was possibly a lurker that created the game sometime before half six this morning
[pen]I say go for it, end Sabogy and create the game.
Stop press
[pen] Haven't we got The Cheddar Valley Gazette running on Orange at present?
...more accurately known as Holmes Raided In Mystery Dawn Swoop.
[UK] Oh. I thought that was mystery-based, which is never my thing, so I hadn't looked. Something had to be done to get rid of the sweary thing though - the same game forced me to bed on Saturday night. Feel free to fold the newspaper game if you don't want it. Fold... geddit? ;o)
How about playing the Flower Game, as mooted by Bob in ...so help me God? :)
I don't think we've ever played Commie Crescent, which might be interesting. The winner is the first to redistribute Mornington Crescent to all the other players.
Practicality
BM] Your example of driving in New Zealand illustrates my point. Of course there is a practical advantage to carrying your driving license whilst driving. This practical advantage is that if stopped by the Police, you would nat have to go through the painful process that may arise from your not carrying it. This is my point with ID cards - one might carry it purely for teh "practical" reason that it is law and it is easier just to obey the lwa and thereby avoid any ridiculous consequences that may arise from not carrying it. But there is no MORAL reason why one should carry an ID card. I think what you fail to realise is that although our moral obligations often comply with legal obligations, many people do not believe that something is a moral obligation simply because it is a legal obligation. This is especially true when it comes to minor traffic violations. I must say that I find your blind obedience quite frightening, in a 1984 kind of way.
Yes but
StD] I know this is an argument where no-one will convince anyone else, but I have a problem with individuals deciding what they are and are not morally obliged to do. I'm sure Harold Shipman believed that he was morally right in relieving these old people of their suffering (and I know that's a reductio ad absurdum, but it is the other end of the same continuum). As for minor traffic offences, the roads are provided and maintained by highway authorities/the government for people to use in cars under certain conditions. Thus I would equate asking people to carry their licence with insisting that cars should be taxed and insisting on speed limits with insisting on insurance or insisting that people should not be under the influence.
On identity cards I would take the French view, that they should be provided cheaply and for all, but that it should not be obligatory to carry one (most French people do, but that's for convenience). However, the government shouldn't argue that they will be good for the country and for security and then try to recoup the entire cost of providing them in their cost.
On identity cards I would take the French view, that they should be provided cheaply and for all, but that it should not be obligatory to carry one (most French people do, but that's for convenience). However, the government shouldn't argue that they will be good for the country and for security and then try to recoup the entire cost of providing them in their cost.
[INJ] Individuals do make their own moral decisions, Shipman included. If you're suggesting a moral principle that laws ought to be obeyed, that's your principle and you're welcome to live by it, but it's still up to everyone else whether they decide to adopt that principle or not.
[INJ] "Cheap" identity cards? Whatever the upfront fee, the entire cost of introducing cards will be borne by the taxpayers. That is where governments get their money from.
[INJ] The only real problem with insisting individuals align their morals with the law is how you go about enforcing it. After all, surely that's what the law is intended to do anyway! When it comes down to it, I don't think it's possible to force someone to adopt a belief - and what are moral values if not beliefs?
[Raak] At the risk of hounding you from server to server on the topic of redistribution, they do, but not equally. :) [Darren] I think I'm happy with the law as a means of controlling behaviour more than belief. It then isn't necessary to believe wholly in the moral force of the law, but to simply act expediently or calculatedly in relation to it. If the law is any good (and sometimes it is very good), its drafters will tend to make some rough calculations about the behaviours it will provoke and try to ensure those give the moral outcome desired.
Simulposted - but still
[Raak, Darren] You're right of course, and I think I've said something that I don't really mean. I suppose I have misgivings that people (including myself), have a tendency to advance a 'moral high ground' defence for something that is really much more to do with convenience. This weakens the force of real, more important, moral stands.
[Cost of ID cards] If there are advantages in things like security, reducing benefit fraud and the like, then the cost of ID cards should be at least partly borne by those budgets. If you don't do that then in effect it's an addition to the government tax take - I'm arguing that it should be neutral or that the cost should come out of general, means-based, progressive taxation..
[Cost of ID cards] If there are advantages in things like security, reducing benefit fraud and the like, then the cost of ID cards should be at least partly borne by those budgets. If you don't do that then in effect it's an addition to the government tax take - I'm arguing that it should be neutral or that the cost should come out of general, means-based, progressive taxation..
[Projoy] I wasn't intending to depict the law as a controller of belief, so much as a set of moral values which are supposedly held by the majority of society (or, more accurately, by the government) but not necessarily by individuals. In this sense, the law's connection with belief is that it's a formal statement of the way the government and/or society believes we should behave.
By way of light relief, and with Pen in mind...
heavily UNrelieved
[Btd] What the f ...?
... and by the way
'pen' has a small 'p'
[Chalky] She should see the doctor about that.
Or at least have the decency to use the proper receptacle for it.
moral obligations
I really think its a fascinating discussion. I must say though ImNotJohn, that there si really no-one else at all who can decide what I am morally obliged to do and not do do. They can give an opinion, they can throw me in jail, they can make me a saint or a pariah, but they cannot really decide what I feel morally obliged to do or not do. Anwya - I have to rush off now, but I do think its fascinatiing - and if yo ugoogle "Moral Obligation Obey Law" you find a lot of papers written on teh subject and it appears that great minds in this area have always and no doubt will alwyas disagree on what the answer is....
CdB Btd and WtF etc
[Btd] Blimey. Thank you very much. I know we talked about CdB and LiR, but what the hell did we say? He's a scary-looking man, anyhow.
[pen] He looks very smug, doesn't he? Always very smug. I wonder what on earth he can find to be smug about.
Sabogy
It's not a bad name for a game, but I wonder what it would be?
Sabogy
attempts to bogey a sabotage come to mind, but I don't know what that is either.
[St D] I wasn't advocating "blind obedience"! On the contrary, I said that there may be times when one is morally obliged to break the law if doing so would bring about more good or prevent more harm. But I do think that if this is not the case one is morally obliged to obey the law, simply from the fact that laws are made by the society which we are part of and from which we benefit. Read Plato's Crito for a rather more extreme defence of this (Socrates argues that one should never break the law, even an unjust one, for this reason).
[Darren] I think most philosophers, at least, would say that a moral value is not a belief, because you believe a proposition (eg "There is a God" or "Tony Blair is a jolly nice chap") but moral values are not really propositions. They may look like propositions (eg "It is wrong to murder") but this is simply a linguistic quirk. The reason is that moral statements don't simply express a fact, they prescribe an obligation - they state what you should do, rather than how things are. This is why many people think that expressions of morality are basically the same as expressions of taste, so that "Murder is wrong" is no more a statement of fact - and therefore no more a belief as such - than "This picture is nice". This probably isn't really very relevant to the discussion, though. I'm just feeling pretentious. But is it objectively true that I am?
[Darren] I think most philosophers, at least, would say that a moral value is not a belief, because you believe a proposition (eg "There is a God" or "Tony Blair is a jolly nice chap") but moral values are not really propositions. They may look like propositions (eg "It is wrong to murder") but this is simply a linguistic quirk. The reason is that moral statements don't simply express a fact, they prescribe an obligation - they state what you should do, rather than how things are. This is why many people think that expressions of morality are basically the same as expressions of taste, so that "Murder is wrong" is no more a statement of fact - and therefore no more a belief as such - than "This picture is nice". This probably isn't really very relevant to the discussion, though. I'm just feeling pretentious. But is it objectively true that I am?
Sabogies
's a bogey, innit, like, summin 's up yer nose.
Call my Sabogy
I would agree with Raak in that it is a shortened phrase almost a slang, it really originates from the estates in Glasgow, in their misunderstanding of what a bidet is for. As in
young child, "Wha's tha da?"
Jimmy "Sabogy"
young child, "Wha's tha da?"
Jimmy "Sabogy"
blind obedience
BM] Fair point - sorry I missed that. I still feel that I side with teh school of thought that says we are not morally obliged to do anything really. Especially not simply obey laws because they are laws. I generally do and will obey laws, I hasten to add.
[St D] So if we are not morally obliged to do anything, would you say that if, for example, you found yourself on a desert island with an extremely annoying companion, and if (by hypothesis) there were no way for your actions ever to be discovered or punished, there would be no moral reason for you not to murder him and make kebabs? I should probably add that I'm inclined to agree that there is no such thing, really, as objective moral obligation, so when I talk about the obligation to obey laws I'm really just speaking for myself. But I'd be interested to see how you answer this one.
[BM] I don't agree with you when you say moral values are not beliefs. When they state what you should do, that's just another way of saying they state how you believe you should act. It's a matter of semantics, and at any rate I do agree that it's probably not enormously relevant. Incidentally, are you claiming that beliefs express fact? That's patently false. The difference between a belief and a fact is that, whereas a person may hold both to be true, the former need not be objectively true. Person A believes there is a god. Person B believes there is no god. How can both their beliefs equal objective fact at the same time?
Kebabs
(BreadM) The moral force behind not murdering your extremely irritating (but presumably unthreatening) companion is that you yourself would not like to be kebabbed. That is an absolute but the example you give is easy to evaluate. Not everything is quite so straightforward.
dead meat
BM] No I wouldn't say that at all. What I (think I am) saying is that there is not really, in my view, a moral imperative to obey a law simply because it is a law. I wouldn't kill someone by who was annoying for kebabs, even if I would never be found out, purely because of I suppose, the "moral reason" that you shouldn't kill people. As it so happens, there is no "practical" reason not to kill the annoying person [assuming that you aren't worried about being lonely or whatever], as the fact that there is to be no come back on it at all has removed the practical reason to not kill someone - because it is against the law and you may end up in the nick. What I think is that the moral obligations that a person feels rest pretty much the same irrespective of what laws exist or are being prepared or are being updated.
If a new law is brought in saying "You can't smoke in pubs" for example, I would not smoke in pubs because I was being asked not to by the Landlord, not because it was against the law. If I was in a pub where the landlord and all the customers were smoking, then I would smoke too. This actually happened in California a year or so ago - having slowly got used to not smoking in bars, I was in Lone Pine (nr Death Valley) and was about to light up at the bar. I stopped myself and said "Forgot I was ion California, sorry" and the barmaid laughed, pulled out an ashtray and said "This is Lone Pine, Honey".
If a new law is brought in saying "You can't smoke in pubs" for example, I would not smoke in pubs because I was being asked not to by the Landlord, not because it was against the law. If I was in a pub where the landlord and all the customers were smoking, then I would smoke too. This actually happened in California a year or so ago - having slowly got used to not smoking in bars, I was in Lone Pine (nr Death Valley) and was about to light up at the bar. I stopped myself and said "Forgot I was ion California, sorry" and the barmaid laughed, pulled out an ashtray and said "This is Lone Pine, Honey".
[Darren] I don't think Bm was suggesting that beliefs were facts, more that they are ideas about what is. Ideas about what ought to be are a whole other class. I think it's overoptimistic to hope that any system of law will be an encoding of some sort of consistent moral philosophy. This is not least because there are usually contradictory premises even where the law is set out from first principles, leaving Supreme Courts to scratch their heads and deliver hung verdicts. The law represents just an accretive set of some morals some people had at some points in history (which is not to say it's arbitrary, just tremendously compromised by the practical realities of how it is made). My naive working assumption is usually that whoever made the law did so for the general benefit, so it's better to have obedience as the default position. There are also laws (such as speed limits) where an arbitrary line was drawn which could as easily have been drawn somewhere else (there's nothing intrinsically safer about 70mph over 71mph), but the benefit for all in drawing a line is that it gives a common framework, arbitrary though it may be, that enables drivers to make consistent calculations about risk and behaviour - so the law is worth obeying on a "what if everyone broke it?" sort of basis, I think. [Bm] I'm with you: no objective force for morals. One can easily chip away any moral principle (if you're willing to take an unpopular position) by questioning the source of its authority. You can chip away at facts in this way too, usually by resorting to that undergraduate nuclear option, the epistemological question, but it does strike me as harder.
Epistemology
(Projoy) It's an awful long time since I was an undergraduate, so what is The epistemological question? And, presuming you answer, how do you know that?
The epistomological question is "Ah, but how can you know anything?" and one usually sees it used when its invoker has lost the argument. :)
[Projoy] I doubt anybody really has a consistent moral philosophy. I certainly don't. I'm not entirely sure your view of laws is any different from mine. We just worded it differently. At any rate, I also agree there is no objective force for morals. Oh, and the loser in invoking The epistemological question is probably the highbrow equivalent of Godwin's Law.
I used to think that morality was no more than personal preference, delusionally experienced (as our perceptions usually are) as external to oneself. What else could moral statements be, since they are not demonstrable matters of fact? These days I'm not so sure, mainly due to personal experience that I don't think I can describe. A third possibility is that they are indemonstrable matters of fact, which is C.S. Lewis' position in "The Abolition of Man", which I mentioned here recently. They can be learned only by certain experiences, but the experience cannot be communicated. They cannot even be demonstrated to oneself, only lived by or not.
[Darren] Projoy answered it for me really, but yes, I meant that beliefs are about propositions, which may be true or false. A proposition is the thing that, if it is true, is a fact. And I do think that moral views are not beliefs, because they are not about propositions. It may be linguistically acceptable to say "X is wrong" but I don't think that that expresses a real proposition, because it's not something that can really be true or false. It's a commonplace now that ought cannot be reduced to is, because there is something about a prescription that is not simply a factual statement - it is, in a sense, an order. Quite what that non-factual element is, though, is a matter of debate.
[Rosie] But what has what I would like got to do with it? On the contrary, one might say that my own desire to remain unkebabed is all the more reason to kebabify the other chap, for fear of his doing it to me first (since he finds me just as irritating as I do him, and no wonder). Of course, I don't know if you're supported St D's position as originally expressed that we are not morally obliged to do anything, or aiming to refute it.
[St D] So then in fact you do think we have moral obligations? I thought you meant that we don't at all - presumably you meant only with regard to obeying the law? In which case I apologise for misunderstanding you.
I almost simulposted with Raak, and it's funny because I think I'm increasingly drawn to the view he says he now doesn't share, which is odd because normally you'd think we'd be the other way around!
[Rosie] But what has what I would like got to do with it? On the contrary, one might say that my own desire to remain unkebabed is all the more reason to kebabify the other chap, for fear of his doing it to me first (since he finds me just as irritating as I do him, and no wonder). Of course, I don't know if you're supported St D's position as originally expressed that we are not morally obliged to do anything, or aiming to refute it.
[St D] So then in fact you do think we have moral obligations? I thought you meant that we don't at all - presumably you meant only with regard to obeying the law? In which case I apologise for misunderstanding you.
I almost simulposted with Raak, and it's funny because I think I'm increasingly drawn to the view he says he now doesn't share, which is odd because normally you'd think we'd be the other way around!
[Projoy] My rule of thumb is that when someone questions the possibility of knowing the truth of anything, there is some specific truth they are trying very hard to ignore.
[Bm] What view are you moving away from, if I may ask?
[BM] I understand your argument now. A belief is a proposition which must be objectively true or false, whereas a moral value is based on something subjective... I do see where you're coming from, but I'm still not entirely comfortable with it. It seems almost a logical positivist approach to belief - that something can only be a belief if its accuracy can be objectively determined. So what of the question of whether there is a god? Is there a way of determining if there is a god or not? If not, then belief in a god can't be a belief. If you disagree with this, why is it less acceptable for "X is wrong" to be a proposition than "there is a god"? If you agree with it, then is religion in general a set moral values rather than a set of beliefs?
I meant "a set of moral values" rather than "a set moral values" of course.
Ooh, it's getting gritty now...
[Raak] I didn't really have a view to move away from, to be honest. This is partly because I always found ethics by far the dullest area of philosophy and never formally did it. I suppose the view I'm moving away from is the view that there is any sense in which "X is right/wrong" is objectively true or even objectively anything. It may be possible for it to be objectively something, but I'm not sure what, and if it's not truth then I'm not really interested.
[Darren] Oh no, I'm no logical positivist, a position I think is pretty silly (for the uninitiated, this is the view that something can be true only if it can be shown to be true). I don't say that we can't know the truth value of ethical propositions, therefore they can't be true. Rather, I say that they are not propositions at all. They are not stating facts (or falsehoods) of any kind. Thus they differ from the proposition you give of "There is a God," which I certainly think (a) cannot be shown to be either true or false, but (b) is either true or false. That's an unverifiable proposition, but "X is wrong" isn't really a proposition at all, even though it looks like one. Part of the reason I think this is that I cannot imagine how a world in which "X is wrong" is true differs from a world in which "X is wrong" is false other than that one difference. But I think that if a proposition is true it must express something about actual things actually in the world - that is, facts are, as it were, parasitic upon things. So for "There is a God" to be true there would have to be an actual God, whilst for it to be false there would have to be none. But I don't know what kind of "thing" would have to be different for "X is false" to be a fact or a falsehood. Thus it's not merely that we don't know whether it's true or not, I don't think it means anything at all to say that it is true - that is, it's not the sort of thing that can be true. If you follow me.
[Raak] I didn't really have a view to move away from, to be honest. This is partly because I always found ethics by far the dullest area of philosophy and never formally did it. I suppose the view I'm moving away from is the view that there is any sense in which "X is right/wrong" is objectively true or even objectively anything. It may be possible for it to be objectively something, but I'm not sure what, and if it's not truth then I'm not really interested.
[Darren] Oh no, I'm no logical positivist, a position I think is pretty silly (for the uninitiated, this is the view that something can be true only if it can be shown to be true). I don't say that we can't know the truth value of ethical propositions, therefore they can't be true. Rather, I say that they are not propositions at all. They are not stating facts (or falsehoods) of any kind. Thus they differ from the proposition you give of "There is a God," which I certainly think (a) cannot be shown to be either true or false, but (b) is either true or false. That's an unverifiable proposition, but "X is wrong" isn't really a proposition at all, even though it looks like one. Part of the reason I think this is that I cannot imagine how a world in which "X is wrong" is true differs from a world in which "X is wrong" is false other than that one difference. But I think that if a proposition is true it must express something about actual things actually in the world - that is, facts are, as it were, parasitic upon things. So for "There is a God" to be true there would have to be an actual God, whilst for it to be false there would have to be none. But I don't know what kind of "thing" would have to be different for "X is false" to be a fact or a falsehood. Thus it's not merely that we don't know whether it's true or not, I don't think it means anything at all to say that it is true - that is, it's not the sort of thing that can be true. If you follow me.
[Bm] (I assume that your last "X is false" was a misprint for "X is wrong"?) According to the view I am suggesting without necessarily being committed to, what would be different for "X is wrong" to be a fact or a falsehood would be that those with moral insight would agree that X was or was not wrong. That doesn't advance things much, but moves the question to "How does one acquire moral insight?" And also "How can people claiming different moral insights reach agreement on moral facts?"
I just want to correct "those with moral insight would agree" to "those with moral insight would see".
[Raak] Yes, the typesetters did me wrong. I think you're going to have to elaborate somewhat on your suggestion, though. If the sole difference between "X is wrong" being true and false is whether those with moral insight think it is, then that doesn't seem to me to be a very strong claim. Are you basically saying that things are right/wrong because most people (or most appropriate people) think so? But clearly this is quite different from normal propositions - for example, "Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system" isn't true or false by majority opinion, and neither is "There is a God." Normally we think of propositions being things that people recognise the truth or falsity of, rather than things that they determine the truth or falsity of. Alternatively, if you think that those with moral insight are in fact not determining rightness/wrongness but recognising it, then that begs the question on what grounds these people see that X is right or wrong. Do they just "see" it with Enlightenment-style infallible conscience, with no further explanation? This is quite apart from the problem you suggest yourself, which is how to recognise those with authentic moral insight, and how to deal with the problem of disagreement over morality.
[Raak] I know you're not fully taking the position that there are naturally some people with greater moral authority, but it's interesting to compare with the libertarian worldview which (without knowing much about it) I would have thought would rely on the idea that morality is personal and subjective.
As you say, it doesn't advance things much to suppose there are those with moral insight, since it's basically a deferral of the question about the source of any objective morality. For "God", read "the enlightened". You thus can't move on to asking "how does one acquire moral insight?" without committing to the belief that there is such a thing, so a leap of faith would seem to be required. Definitely not one I'm prepared to make based on my experiences.
As you say, it doesn't advance things much to suppose there are those with moral insight, since it's basically a deferral of the question about the source of any objective morality. For "God", read "the enlightened". You thus can't move on to asking "how does one acquire moral insight?" without committing to the belief that there is such a thing, so a leap of faith would seem to be required. Definitely not one I'm prepared to make based on my experiences.
[Bm] Moral propositions (in the view I'm setting out) aren't true by virtue of being believed, they are true objectively, and those able to see them believe because they see them. How do they do this? Well, how do you (for example) recognise the ordinary physical objects around you? There's no "how" involved that we can say anything useful about (at least not until non-invasive brain scanning technology improves in resolution by many orders of magnitude). The same for moral perception. How people get to be able to have moral perceptions is more answerable in the here and now: upbringing, spontaneous revelation, or learning from enlightened people.
[Projoy] If there is such a thing as moral authority at all, then some people will have more of it than others. I don't know where that "naturally" comes from: if it's an elite, it's one that anyone can join, the same as authority about temporal matters. There is indeed an act of faith involved: the faith that there are objective morals. But there is also an act of faith involved in the perception of physical truths. The main difference between the two is that most people's physical senses function at a high enough level that it is easy for all to agree on simple physical statements, while the same degree of consensus is lacking in the moral realm. One difference, at any rate. Another is that people are much more attached to their moral judgements than their physical ones.
[Projoy] If there is such a thing as moral authority at all, then some people will have more of it than others. I don't know where that "naturally" comes from: if it's an elite, it's one that anyone can join, the same as authority about temporal matters. There is indeed an act of faith involved: the faith that there are objective morals. But there is also an act of faith involved in the perception of physical truths. The main difference between the two is that most people's physical senses function at a high enough level that it is easy for all to agree on simple physical statements, while the same degree of consensus is lacking in the moral realm. One difference, at any rate. Another is that people are much more attached to their moral judgements than their physical ones.
Our three chief weapons are...
Upbringing, spontaneous revelation, learning from enlightened people...or arriving at them by working them out oneself.
fundamental philosophical talk
[Raak] True, there needn't be a "naturally" although of course in the case of perception of reality there are real reasons why some people are naturally better at intuitive perception of reality than others (a minor example is perfect pitch). We don't necessarily know the nuts 'n' bolts reasons for these differences but it is something we can say with some confidence based on the level of agreement about reality and different people's success at perceiving intuitively that which we can independently verify: I sing a note. JLE says it's A, I play an A on the piano and it corroborates his statement. But crucially his doing this does not allow me to learn perfect pitch from him. If accurate perception of some kind of objective morality is a higher order skill of this type, it's then a reasonable speculation there probably is a hierarchy of people's ability to perceive moral absolutes.
In the case of morality this strikes me as considerably wilder speculation than making the same statement about perfect pitch. This might be for anthropic reasons, of course, but if so your line of reasoning becomes rather depressing for those who don't sense an objective morality, since it suggests they are missing something big and are never going to perceive it! (Slartibartfast would say, "Oh, no, that's just paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.")
In the case of morality this strikes me as considerably wilder speculation than making the same statement about perfect pitch. This might be for anthropic reasons, of course, but if so your line of reasoning becomes rather depressing for those who don't sense an objective morality, since it suggests they are missing something big and are never going to perceive it! (Slartibartfast would say, "Oh, no, that's just paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.")
addendum
...and of course something else follows from that line of reasoning, which is that if one is to have the best system of law, there are objectively people who are qualified to legislate and indeed, such a thing as government with objective moral force, whom we lesser mortals are insufficiently equipped to judge!
Absolute pitch
(Projoy) If intuitive means "knowing without thinking" then absolute pitch is intuitive. I have it, and always have had, and I can't quite understand why anybody who's had access to a musical instrument at an early age and is musical hasn't got it. It is, in my view, only a form of memory, motivated by a strong interest in the subject. Maybe its rarity is due to it having little evolutionary or survival advantage, unlike colour recognition. It's not much help, especially these days, to know that ex-GWR steam engines whistle in A flat (1st leger line above the treble).
(Projoy) Just seen your addendum. There are indeed people who are qualified to legislate, not because they have any superior sense of morality but because they understand the nuts and bolts of legislation and its effects (sometimes). Furthermore, we have asked them to do it, this being some sort of democracy.
[Projoy] But there are people who don't sense morality. They're highly exceptional: we call them psychopaths. Not sensing the objectiveness of morality or not believing in its objectiveness are different, and don't disqualify anyone from sensing morality. As for legislation, possessing sound moral judgement does not give anyone a right to order other people around. Indeed, the delusion that "if only everyone acted as I think they ought to the world would run a lot better, therefore they should be made to act like that" is a pretty clear sign of moral immaturity.
pitch black
[Rosie] I think we did this discussion before and established that color recognition isn't really analogous to pitch recognition (because we can point at something and say "yellow", even when it's in shadow in a way that lowers the frequency to something we'd normally call brown). In a similar way, I hear a note in the context of a tune and can say "submedian" even if I can't say "Bb" or whatever it happens to be. Perhaps there is a window of opportunity very early in life to acquire perfect pitch (I'd be interested to know if there's any evidence that people who learn an instrument from, say, 4, are x times more likely to have perfect pitch than those who only start at 7, say), but from my perspective, I certainly don't think it's related to level of interest. An old music teacher of mine used to talk about an academic colleague of hers who was so envious of others' perfect pitch that he tried to learn it. He would play a note on the piano at the top of the college building then walk to the basement, brushing aside all attempts to engage him in conversation, all the while humming the note under his breath until he reached the piano in the basement. I understand he never achieved his goal :). [re: legislators] Yes, but good legislators can do their job in the absence of any moral principles. If someone told them to draft a law that compels everyone to kill their neigbour they could do that just as easily as drafting an obviously moral law. What Raak and Bm and Darren and I are speculating about is whether there are people objectively better qualified to frame the moral basis of legislation.
[Projoy] I don't think that's what I'm speculating about. (For what it's worth, I don't think any one person is more qualified to frame the moral basis of legislation than any other. To err is human, after all, and it strikes me that in order to define morality one must be infallible and therefore above the reach of mere morality. Am I making any sense or just rambling incoherently?) What I'm speculating about is whether morality and belief are the same thing. I suspect I may have to agree to disagree with Bm over that, because I'm still not convinced by his argument. The thing is, I'm reminded of Hofstadter, where he was talking about how a rock smashing a space probe may seem like a waste to us, but to a sufficiently intelligent race it may seem obvious that that's the most appropriate thing that can be done to it. The point I'm making is that just because humanity can't objectively decide whether X is wrong or right morally, it doesn't mean there isn't an absolute answer to the question which could be answered definitively by an intelligence with greater insight than ours, with rock-solid logical backup and an appropriate set of side-effects. Again, maybe that makes no sense at all. Part of the reason for saying all this is to expose the underlying thoughts which are running through my mind as I write these posts just to see if anything falls apart when they're examined more closely.
The connection with logical propositions is that, as it seems to me, Bm's definition of belief as logical proposition implies that something becomes a moral value if it can't be stated as a logical proposition as far as human intelligence is aware, whereas I don't draw any distinction simply on the basis of the limit of human awareness. Perhaps that's the difference between Bm's position and mine. Perhaps I'm being needlessly mystical about the whole thing.
Can someone have a more-well-tuned moral compass than others? Certainly. But was Gandhi's sense of morality "nature", and Siddartha Guatama's sense of morality "nurture"? (That is, a matter of learned experience vs. innate sensibility.) And of course, those who are inclined to seek public office are generally the least suited to holding public office! [Rosie] I would think that perfect pitch cannot be learned, because even though the cochlea can pass along a B flat vibration, the brain still has to define the vibration. [Raak] Psycho/sociopaths are not lacking in a sense of morality. In fact, they can be highly moral people when it applies to actions against themselves. Their issue lies in the fact that they do not understand the concept of "other", as in, there are other people out there who do exist; and this lack of understanding regarding "otherness" evidences itself to the rest of us as a lack of morality. Which I think is a good argument for morality itself being a learned ability (in that it requires an observer to define Moral and Not-moral).
Morality vs Belief
dictionary.com: morality: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. belief: Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something Now, having said that, how does it apply? One must BELIEVE that one's MORAL STANDARDS are a TRUTH in order for one to have faith in one's morality. (Because if you don't have believe in the verity of your own morality, everything falls apart. "The center cannot hold!")
I should just explain that I brought Stina here.
[Stina] (Hi.) Isn't that circular? Faith in one's morality is the same thing as believing that it is true. To argue on the other side for the moment, one can lead a perfectly moral life while having no such faith in the existence of any objective standard. I have preferences about the way I want to live, and about the way I would like other people to live. But whether I regard these preferences as no more than preferences, or as perceptions of moral truths, in either case I can't prove to anyone else that they should behave the way I think they ought to. The most I can do is argue that living in such and such a way will benefit them in their terms.
[Stina] Welcome! But no - if anything, you must believe that your moral standards are normative, not that they are true. As I argue, moral standards are not the kind of things that are "true". A moral statement is like an imperative. You wouldn't say that "Go to your room!" is true any more than it is false. It just is. The point is that moral statements ultimately boil down to injunctions of that form, even if they are disguised as statements of fact. So "X is wrong" is really "Don't do X!" in disguise. Why? Because to put it another way, statements of morality are things that you can obey or disobey. You can react to a fact or a proposition in any number of ways, but you can't obey or disobey it. Moral claims aren't like that - they invite - indeed demand - obedience in some way. And an injunction like that is not the kind of thing that can be true or false. The task for the believer in objective morality is to explain in what sense an injunction can be "objective", if it is not in the same sense that a fact can be objective. This is why I disagree with Darren. I'm not saying that moral statements aren't propositions because we don't understand how they can be, and that a greater intelligence than ours could see how they are. I don't think that they are propositions at all, and it doesn't matter how transcendent you are. A hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional being wouldn't ask what the truth-value of a moral statement is, any more than it would ask how heavy a shadow is or what colour 1815 was, because it recognise that to do so is to make a category mistake, that is, to treat something of one category as if it belonged to another. I think that those who ask whether a moral statement is true or false, or assert that it is, are making just such a category mistake.
[Raak] It seems to me that the question of who can recognise moral truth, and how, is something of a distraction from the main question, which is what "moral truth" is in the first place, and how it can exist if the points I've made are valid. If a moral statement does not express a proposition at all, let alone a true one, then what does it express? Taking for granted that there are some people who can recognise it, what are they recognising, quite apart from the question of how?
[Raak] It seems to me that the question of who can recognise moral truth, and how, is something of a distraction from the main question, which is what "moral truth" is in the first place, and how it can exist if the points I've made are valid. If a moral statement does not express a proposition at all, let alone a true one, then what does it express? Taking for granted that there are some people who can recognise it, what are they recognising, quite apart from the question of how?
[Breadmaster] Well, as I said, I suspect we may have to agree to disagree on that. I see no problem with asking what colour 1815 is, or indeed with the proposition "1815 is green." There may not be many ways of reasoning with it, and certainly it might be hard to prove it one way or another (short of formalised synaesthesia!) but I don't happen to believe that those issues prevent it being true or false. If it's a category mistake, then no number/year has a property equivalent to colour, and the statement is false. It's still a proposition.
You said earlier that "ought" does not reduce to "is." Fair enough, but you then say "X is wrong" is really "Don't do X!" in disguise, or, to put it another way, "One ought not X." Surely you're self-contradicting here. At any rate, I fundamentally disagree that just because (if we allow this, which I wouldn't) "X is wrong" may be written "don't do X", that it must always be treated as "don't do X," and that the "X is wrong" form must be disregarded.
[Bm] Well, I'm arguing, or rather exploring the hypothesis, because I think there's some mileage in it, that moral statements are propositions. They are truth claims about the moral universe. The normative consequence -- you should do that which is good, and avoid doing that which is evil -- is a secondary matter. Someone who perceives the moral truth does not have to bludgeon himself with "shoulds" into acting accordingly, he will do so as an inevitable conequence of seeing the truth, the same as he will step out of the way of an onrushing car when he perceives it, and for the same reason.
Pitch and putt
(Projoy) You can't learn absolute pitch, or unlearn it either, which is one reason I play the trombone. All the other blowing instruments in a jazz band are transposing and if I read a C I don't want to hear a Bb, and certainly not an Eb (alto and baritone sax). Trombone is written in bass clef, which results in an impressive stack of leger lines for the high notes. If it's on a space and "in the stratosphere" it's a C (octave above middle C). Otherwise it's a D (hopefully a Db) which I can just about do with a following wind. Why don't they just go into treble clef? Because they don't. Maybe not all trombonists are pianists.
Lost in space....................
Never trust a Vogon when it comes to directions.I've been stuck in the plorii system for the last 8 months!!! But now I'm back...........
To answer my own question re: perfect pitch, I googled a paper which says: "we also observed a significant association between AP and the age at which an individual first began playing music. For the AP group as a whole, the mean age of starting musical activities was 5.4 ± 2.8 years, whereas, for the non-AP group, the mean age was 7.9 ± 3.2 years (P < .0001)."
Also, it says, perfect pitch is far more common in Oriental people.
[Projoy] But -- as they also point out, I'm glad to see -- the causation could easily run the other way.
[Bm, Raak, Darren, et al] This is a *great* discussion; one from which I am really learning.
[Bm, Raak, Darren, et al] This is a *great* discussion; one from which I am really learning.
Perfect pitch
I had perfect pitch as a child, but not being a musician, I've never used it, and the skill seems to have decayed. I just tried whistling a middle C, and it turned out to be a tone flat. But maybe I'm channelling Baroque pitch, concert pitch having been invented to boost the E-string industry.
[widey] But we've been here all the time :o) Good to see you back!
Whistling Middle C
I'm not surprised you can't whistle Middle C; you'd need a head the size of a space hopper to do that. Do you mean an octave higher, or maybe even two? As to baroque pitch, I once heard Handel's Messiah sung to the accompaniment of old instruments, as it turned out. "Why are these buggers in D flat?", I was muttering until the penny dropped. Baroque pitch is about 3/4 of a semitone down on concert. (A = 422 or so).
Questions, questions....
What CdM said, first of all - it's this sort of discussion, as much the games, that keeps me coing back to the Morniverse. I do have a couple of questions- probably daft ones, but I'll lob them in anyway
Raak] If moral statements are propositions - objective truths like gravity or the earth being round - then shouldn't we as a species have discovered some of them by now? And how exact are they? Do you mean general statements like the Ten Commandments, or more specific ones? And if they are objective truths, then surely they admit no exceptions? Which is somewhat problematic - the proposition likely to get the greatest assent is probably "You shall not kill", but if pushed, most people would admit to believing some caveats to even that one (just wars, self-defence, etc).
Darren] There's a convention called Pantone numbers in printing, where you tell a printer the exact shade of green you want by quoting the Pantone number. Inside that convention, the statement that "1815 is green" is objectively true or false. That convention works because everyone who uses it agrees that the rule-set exists, and that the person or people who defined the rule-set have the right to do so. What I'd question about the idea that "1815 is green" in the wider world is - how do we know that the rule-set exists, and who made it?
Lastly (and without stopping this discussion) could I advance the moral proposition that CdM has won the current round of AVMA, and that he should tell us the answer and set another one?
Raak] If moral statements are propositions - objective truths like gravity or the earth being round - then shouldn't we as a species have discovered some of them by now? And how exact are they? Do you mean general statements like the Ten Commandments, or more specific ones? And if they are objective truths, then surely they admit no exceptions? Which is somewhat problematic - the proposition likely to get the greatest assent is probably "You shall not kill", but if pushed, most people would admit to believing some caveats to even that one (just wars, self-defence, etc).
Darren] There's a convention called Pantone numbers in printing, where you tell a printer the exact shade of green you want by quoting the Pantone number. Inside that convention, the statement that "1815 is green" is objectively true or false. That convention works because everyone who uses it agrees that the rule-set exists, and that the person or people who defined the rule-set have the right to do so. What I'd question about the idea that "1815 is green" in the wider world is - how do we know that the rule-set exists, and who made it?
Lastly (and without stopping this discussion) could I advance the moral proposition that CdM has won the current round of AVMA, and that he should tell us the answer and set another one?
[Irouléguy] Here is one account of the moral Way (although I think it leaves out a significant area, one's responsibility towards oneself). Does the law of gravity admit of exceptions? Yet iron ships float, planes fly, and Voyager is escaping the solar system, and for well-understood reasons. Anyone touting a verbal formula as the truth, whether in the scientific realm or the moral realm, has already fallen into error.
[Irouléguy] Even if an objective rule-set exists, it doesn't need a maker, unless you want to be creationist about it, or you want to take the view that all mappings are abstract constructs formed by the human mind, in which case there's no such thing as a natural rule-set, but nor does there have to be a single named maker as such things can be built up over time. At any rate, there is no need for "1815 is green" as a logical proposition to say anything about the wider world (the meaning and nature of which we could debate for many centuries), because, apart from the fact that we could be talking about all kinds of symbolism, the proposition in itself is a kind of proposed mapping between 1815ness and greenness. It doesn't have to be objectively true or false, but what we do have to be able to say is, if we had enough data, we could determine whether it was true or false. In other words, we don't need a rule-set, because the proposition itself, if true, implies the existence of one. If false, however, it says nothing about the existence or non-existence of a rule-set, although if there is no rule-set, the proposition is not a proposition because it cannot be true or false. In the same way, by saying "X is wrong" as a proposed mapping from the concept of X to the concept of wrongness, we don't necessarily say there *is* an objective mapping of actions to moral evaluations, but for "X is wrong" to be objectively true there must be such a mapping. However, just because we can't tell objectively at this stage whether such a rule-set may or may not exist, that doesn't mean that "X is wrong" stops being a proposition. I think Breadmaster's position, in this sense, is that such a rule-set is impossible and so by definition no proposition which purports to use it can have meaning, because it is neither true nor false, and therefore fails to qualify as a proposition. If it can be shown that there is definitively no rule-set, then I agree with Breadmaster that such things aren't propositions. I'm just not entirely convinced that such a rule-set is impossible, even if it is beyond human knowledge. How far this gets us into the question of morality I don't know!
Actually, I said above "There is no objective force for morals," so I've contradicted myself. OK. Let me put it like this, if there is no objective force for morals (as I clearly thought a couple of days ago!) then Breadmaster is correct and my arguments have fallen apart.
The funny thing is, this discussion has made me question in myself whether I really believe there is no such thing as objective morality, and I can't really say for certain one way or the other. Within the human world, I don't think there is anyone who has in themselves, or has determined in some other way, an objective sense or code of morality. So, I suppose I'll have to fall in line with Breadmaster's view that moral values are not logical propositions. Well done Bm! Certainly made me understand my reasoning a bit more.
[CdM] So having perfect pitch makes you Oriental! I always suspected this was the case! :)
[Raak] I understand that you're suggesting your personal insights into this come from experiences which you can't describe here, so you are rather hamstrung in terms of pursuing this hypothesis of objective morality, at least in this forum. But I am inclined to ask you some skeptical, pedantic questions, such as what a "moral universe" is, how you think the whole thing might work (in just the way you can't find here). If a moral intuiter steps out of the way of immoral actions because they perceive risk to themself (as in your car analogy), that is one thing (but implies self-interest being at the heart of morality, which would make it subjective, surely?); if a moral intuiter senses moral danger, what sort of process do you speculate might be going on in their heads that doesn't appear to go on in mine? Further, if you have some experience of this, maybe - without having to talk about the experience - you could tentatively specify an example of an objective moral rule...?
[Projoy] I knew someone was going to say that.
[Darren] Yayy! Thank you. By the way, I inexplicably can't access this page (alone of all in the Morniverse) from work any more, it seems, which is why I fell silent. Bear in mind that even moral statements are not propositions, it does not necessarily follow that they are not universally applicable. "Don't murder!" could be normative for everyone even though it does not express an objective fact. Perhaps there could be "objective commands". But what those could be, and how they could be, I don't know, and explaining them is a task for someone else.
[Raak] You surely know that your gravity analogy doesn't apply! Floating ships and space probes aren't "breaking" the law of gravity any more than I am when I hold my leg in the air before taking a step. Rather, the law of gravity is simply one of many physical laws which are inter-related, or interact. But that's beside the point. More to the point is that even the list you link to contains much that is arguable. I, for example, don't set much stock by "duties to ancestors" even though the average Confucian might regard it as a central moral imperative. There is nothing that has been universally accepted as a moral imperative, and even if there were, it wouldn't prove anything other than that people all thought it was right. The most such things can show is that human beings have evolved - either biologically or socially - to think that certain things are right or wrong, presumably because those who didn't think this didn't develop stable societies. Thus most people think that murder is wrong because if they didn't they wouldn't have survived. We can therefore explain moral imperatives - or at least their basic outlines - quite adequately in a historical or evolutionary way, without needing to posit that moral views express some kind of "truth" about the world. And the sorts of questions that Projoy asks indicate that there are big problems with the view that they do. After all, there are many people who think that there are moral facts, but no-one seems able to agree what they are. Is abortion a fundamental right or is it one of the blackest crimes there is? The fact that people disagree doesn't prove that there isn't a matter of fact at dispute, of course, but it does raise the question - how, even in principle, could the dispute be settled? What "evidence" (even if in practice it could not be collected) would prove it one way or the other?
Another point that might be relevant - the Tao website states that "For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent could not prove it." Well, I'm afraid I don't perceive its rationality. I may perceive its utility or practical application. But David Hume pointed out that morality isn't to do with rationality, and vice versa - he said something like "There is nothing irrational about my preferring the destruction of the entire universe to the scratching of my finger," and he was right - such a preference may be morally wrong in whatever sense you have of the word, or it may be highly unuseful, but it's not, strictly speaking, irrational.
[Raak] You surely know that your gravity analogy doesn't apply! Floating ships and space probes aren't "breaking" the law of gravity any more than I am when I hold my leg in the air before taking a step. Rather, the law of gravity is simply one of many physical laws which are inter-related, or interact. But that's beside the point. More to the point is that even the list you link to contains much that is arguable. I, for example, don't set much stock by "duties to ancestors" even though the average Confucian might regard it as a central moral imperative. There is nothing that has been universally accepted as a moral imperative, and even if there were, it wouldn't prove anything other than that people all thought it was right. The most such things can show is that human beings have evolved - either biologically or socially - to think that certain things are right or wrong, presumably because those who didn't think this didn't develop stable societies. Thus most people think that murder is wrong because if they didn't they wouldn't have survived. We can therefore explain moral imperatives - or at least their basic outlines - quite adequately in a historical or evolutionary way, without needing to posit that moral views express some kind of "truth" about the world. And the sorts of questions that Projoy asks indicate that there are big problems with the view that they do. After all, there are many people who think that there are moral facts, but no-one seems able to agree what they are. Is abortion a fundamental right or is it one of the blackest crimes there is? The fact that people disagree doesn't prove that there isn't a matter of fact at dispute, of course, but it does raise the question - how, even in principle, could the dispute be settled? What "evidence" (even if in practice it could not be collected) would prove it one way or the other?
Another point that might be relevant - the Tao website states that "For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent could not prove it." Well, I'm afraid I don't perceive its rationality. I may perceive its utility or practical application. But David Hume pointed out that morality isn't to do with rationality, and vice versa - he said something like "There is nothing irrational about my preferring the destruction of the entire universe to the scratching of my finger," and he was right - such a preference may be morally wrong in whatever sense you have of the word, or it may be highly unuseful, but it's not, strictly speaking, irrational.
[Projoy] Self-interest is at work in stepping out of the path of a car, but that doesn't make it subjective in any useful sense. Everyone will step out of the way of that car, except only children who have not yet learned that it is dangerous, the drug-addled, and the suicidally depressed. This is only subjective to the degree that every thought we have is subjective. What is objective is that the car will kill you if you don't get out of the way. Opinions and wishes are irrelevant. Reality is like the Terminator: you can't reason with it, you can't argue with it. You only have power to choose your actions, not their consequences.
(Repeat earlier caveat that I'm taking this horse out for a ride to test its legs.)
Thus it is with morality. The enlightened do good and avoid evil, because, from their point of view, the first person that good acts benefit and evil acts harm is oneself, consequences as undeniable as traffic. It applies to everything from not mugging old ladies for their pension money to getting out of bed in the morning. The idea has a long pedigree, e.g. Socrates and the Buddhist canon (and in a debased form in the Religions Of The Book, where all the consequences are deferred to a supposed later life, despite the statement by one of their prophets that "the kingdom of heaven is within you"). It doesn't give instant answers to all questions, any more than the laws of physics will immediately tell you how to build a kilometer-tall skyscraper.
(Repeat earlier caveat that I'm taking this horse out for a ride to test its legs.)
Thus it is with morality. The enlightened do good and avoid evil, because, from their point of view, the first person that good acts benefit and evil acts harm is oneself, consequences as undeniable as traffic. It applies to everything from not mugging old ladies for their pension money to getting out of bed in the morning. The idea has a long pedigree, e.g. Socrates and the Buddhist canon (and in a debased form in the Religions Of The Book, where all the consequences are deferred to a supposed later life, despite the statement by one of their prophets that "the kingdom of heaven is within you"). It doesn't give instant answers to all questions, any more than the laws of physics will immediately tell you how to build a kilometer-tall skyscraper.
[Bm] You give two arguments that undercut each other: that there are no universally accepted moral principles, and that universally accepted moral principles arise for evolutionary reasons. You can't have it both ways, but I'll ride this horse over both of them anyway.
No scientific truth is universally accepted either, if you define "universally" narrowly enough. There are, nonetheless, substantial areas of agreement on moral issues that can be found throughout all civilisations. That doesn't prove they are true (as Lewis himself says), merely that they exist. Perceiving their truth is a separate matter.
I could take the evolutionary explanation as evidence on my side -- the consequences of right and wrong action are exactly your presumed evolutionary pressures. Not getting run over is also evolutionarily adaptive, but that does not mean that personal decisions and the laws of physics have nothing to do with it.
How do you perceive the utility of the Way? If it is useful to follow the Way, what is it useful for? And what in turn is that useful for? Utility offers no foundation. Likewise rationality. Look hard enough, and all attempts to find foundations lead only to an infinite regress. Ideas can only justify ideas in terms of other ideas. Morality is about actions, and actions cannot be deduced from thoughts, any more than an ought from an is.
Hume also claimed not to see causation, but he wouldn't have survived to write his books if he hadn't dodged horse-drawn carts now and then.
[Raak] Maybe Hume was just very, very lucky.
[Raak] Your supposition that evil acts harm the doer is where it all falls down for me. Sort of repeating Bm's point, but a car will run people down according to the laws of physics, which can be reliably shown to operate universally (at least as far as we can observe), but mugging someone for their pension cannot be shown universally to have negative effects for the individual (unless you start invoking some unknowable afterlife or karma or whatever). In other words, some people get away with breaking moral rules, in just the way that a car can't get away with braking the rules of physics in order to save a life. There is merely a certain probability that a system of law exists that will make mugging disadvantageous to the perpetrator. This is not 100% (in fact taking human history as a whole, I'm tempted to speculate it is less than 50%). Is there any real evidence whatsoever to the contrary?
Getting away with murder
You might come back with the argument that the fact people get away with breaking moral rules is irrelevant to the truth of those rules, but if so then the truth of those rules is irrelevant to us if we are searching for objective standards, since the rules cannot be shown to have reliable consequences, and therefore do not admit of predictions.
I also think that rational suicide is a very interesting example in the objective/subjective debate, because it's always struck me as a very interesting example of higher-order thinking successfully overruling all the lower-order evolutionary thinking with which we come pre-installed. If our sense of objective morality rests on self-preservation, why would it admit of contradiction in this way?
I also think that rational suicide is a very interesting example in the objective/subjective debate, because it's always struck me as a very interesting example of higher-order thinking successfully overruling all the lower-order evolutionary thinking with which we come pre-installed. If our sense of objective morality rests on self-preservation, why would it admit of contradiction in this way?
Raak] (Following on from Breadmaster's reply) It's also the case that all of these moral traditions arose in societies whose rulers did not follow them, yet all of these moral traditions preached acceptance of those rulers. "Thou shalt not kill" actually become "Thou shalt not kill unless thou art the state". If these are absolute moralities, shouldn't the rulers obey them? And if the rulers are immoral, shouldn't the moral organise to get rid of them and impose the rule of the moral?
My second objection is that I don't see what makes these an objective rule-set, as opposed to the many other moral precepts you could have instead (for example, sexual equality, environmentalism).
Lastly, illustrating Projoy's point, I'm reminded by the weather of the Belloc (?) poem:
The rain it falleth on the just
And on the unjust fella
But more upon the just, because
The unjust stole the just's umbrella
One of the lessons of experience (both direct and indirect) is that crime or acting immorally very often does pay.
Darren] You're right to pick me up on the creationist implication of my argument (not at all what I think). I was with your argument all the way until "In other words, we don't need a rule-set, because the proposition itself, if true, implies the existence of one." I think that's circular reasoning, because the truth or otherwise of a proposition can only be tested by reference to a rule-set.
My second objection is that I don't see what makes these an objective rule-set, as opposed to the many other moral precepts you could have instead (for example, sexual equality, environmentalism).
Lastly, illustrating Projoy's point, I'm reminded by the weather of the Belloc (?) poem:
The rain it falleth on the just
And on the unjust fella
But more upon the just, because
The unjust stole the just's umbrella
One of the lessons of experience (both direct and indirect) is that crime or acting immorally very often does pay.
Darren] You're right to pick me up on the creationist implication of my argument (not at all what I think). I was with your argument all the way until "In other words, we don't need a rule-set, because the proposition itself, if true, implies the existence of one." I think that's circular reasoning, because the truth or otherwise of a proposition can only be tested by reference to a rule-set.
[Irouléguy] Not circular, but certainly flawed. We don't need, and nor can we infer the existence of, a universal rule-set, however we do need a rule-set which covers at least the special case(s) covered by the proposition we know to be true in order to test it, as you say, but we can say (and this is what I was getting at) that if the proposition is true, then such a special-case rule-set must exist, even if its only rule is the true proposition itself. Bringing in the special-case rule-sets, a proof that there is no universal rule-set doesn't discount the possibility of a special-case one which covers only finitely many possibilities, and therefore it is possible for a proposition to be demonstratively true or false even if there is no universal rule-set.
(At this point I'm no longer talking about objectively moral rule-sets.)
(Er... by that I mean the focus of what I'm talking about has shifted away from morality into how logical propositions [can] be members of larger sets of rules mapping one class of items to another.)
[Irouléguy] The moral organising to remove unjust rulers happens now and then, for example, in Iraq. (I am not joking.) Imposing the rule of the moral, though, is a contradiction in terms. Rule can only be imposed on an unwilling populace by killing enough of them to intimidate the rest. What is moral about that? Re your second point, you see it or you don't. That is the key difference between empirical knowledge and moral knowledge: one is demonstrable and the other is not. On your third point, why didn't the just man thump the unjust when he tried to make off with his umbrella? Sometimes crime pays and sometimes it doesn't.
[Projoy] Indeed, mugging someone cannot be demonstrated to have those negative effects upon the soul that have nothing to do with the courts. The world-view I'm arguing is one that can only be held as a matter of faith. That, it occurs to me, is what religious faith really is. It is not belief in stories about empty tombs or dictating angels; it is the belief that not only are good and evil knowable, but the knowledge is closer than your own heartbeat.
But to return specifically to mugging, muggers are not notably well-off, materially successful people, are they, even if they never go to jail? There are no rich muggers.
But to return specifically to mugging, muggers are not notably well-off, materially successful people, are they, even if they never go to jail? There are no rich muggers.
Not philosophy
ISIHAC is back, and a good one too. Carry on.
Carrying on
The supposed negative consequences of sin are not some sort of consolation for the good -- "he stole my wallet, but he'll burn in hell for all eternity, so that's ok". Morality only has application to oneself. Other people will do whatever they do, whatever one thinks about what they do.
[Raak] *holds his position in the discussion while he looks online for the biography of a mugger who becomes very rich*
Per Capita
Any chance of a recap for someone who's not been able to follow this discussion closely whilst it's been ongoing? From what I can gather my thoughts are
- What's the definition of morality? I've seen a few arguments as to what it's not, but what is it?
- Without knowing what morality is, I can't decide whether there's any sense in talking about an absolute one or not.
- What I do find interesting, though, is why people seem to have converged on having similar feelings about certain things (such as killing other people to be 'bad' [which I am happy to try and define, should that be necessary]) despite having in other ways entirely different social backgrounds and upbringing. I appreciate that there are two possible explanations for this: one, a higher "moral" force. I'm more interested in the other explanation.
(within, I should say, the confines of this discussion. I'm sure this ground has been trodden more generally by many others before. But few of us, presumably, were there, so...)
[Raak] Well, you're a bit unfair to say that the points I made contradict each other - I don't think there are any universally accepted moral mores, but those which are predominantly accepted can be explained in an evolutionary way. But I don't see that this is backing for your position, or as you put it, "the consequences of right and wrong action are exactly your presumed evolutionary pressures". Seems to me more reasonable to say that "right" and "wrong" are simply words that human beings have learned to apply to actions with such consequences. But if that is so, why should we do "right" and avoid "wrong"? I think this is the problem with the position you're defending, that "right" actions help the doer and "wrong" ones harm him/her. That isn't morality, it's prudence. Prudence means doing what is sensible, essentially, from one's own point of view. Many accounts of "ethics" have really been about this, the most famous being Aristotle's, which is all about how to achieve "eudaimonia" or "happiness". But this isn't what most of us understand by "morality", for two reasons. The first is that prudence often conflicts with what most people would understand as morality. For example, a soldier who throws himself on top of a grenade to save his friends is clearly not acting prudently, but most people would want to say he acts morally. Second, prudence does not have the force of imperative that I was talking about earlier. A moral value is, in some sense, a command. "Murder is wrong" means "Don't murder people!" You can ignore it or disobey it if you want, but the command still demands a response (and this, I think, for rab's benefit, must be part of the definition of a moral statement). By contrast, "If you mug people it will redound against you" isn't a command, it's simply a statement. It's not telling you to do something. What I want from a decent account of moral statements is an explanation of that imperative, and it seems to me that appealing to consequences in this way - or indeed in any way, such as that of utilitarianism - does not do this.
To put that point a slightly different way, moral values can be transgressed, whereas ones of prudence cannot. "Do not murder people" can be obeyed or disobeyed - "Murder will ultimately harm yourself" cannot.
The wealth of muggers
[Projoy] Look at it this way: muggers are literally stealing people's pocket money. How is anyone going to get rich doing that?
[Raak] Whyever not? One mugger doesn't just mug one victim. They do it over and over again, as long as they don't get caught (that's probably the only practical limiting clause). There's also always the possibility they'll hit a minor jackpot, too, of someone who's carrying more than just "pocket money." I would imagine, for instance, that some of us going up to Rugby had a fair amount in cash. (As the guy collecting money for T-shirts, this is more than mere speculation!) Once they've got some money, there's no reason they couldn't invest their ill-gotten gains wisely, either, and make it grow a bit. True, I doubt most muggers are smart enough to know how to do that, but I don't think you can say it's inherently impossible to become rich through it.
[Raak] Oh, and I think you're also ignoring the way they tend to take other things the person has on them, such as credit cards, watches, jewellery, etc. The latter two probably aren't worth very much for most people (let's be honest, most people wear crap), but cards can lead to all kinds of nastily profitable shenanigans.
[Breadmaster] How about the sense of guilt? Doing something you know to be wrong makes you feel guilty. So, to put it another way, if something makes you feel guilty, it's something you feel to be immoral (this can be irrationally so, of course, insofar as any morality can be said to have a rational basis). Obviously, this isn't objective because different people feel guilt for different things.
[Darren] Ok, one can imagine how to make a lot of money at street crime, but I seriously doubt if anyone does. It's just not a real career option for anyone wanting to do more than just live hand to mouth.
[Bm] What is a "should"? What are commands? The moral person would no more thrust his hand into another's pocket than into a nest of vipers. Shoulds and commands are for those who lack insight and must be told what to do. I have not (yet) read Aristotle (is this the Nicomachean Ethics?), but morality as enlightened prudence sounds right to me.
[Bm] What is a "should"? What are commands? The moral person would no more thrust his hand into another's pocket than into a nest of vipers. Shoulds and commands are for those who lack insight and must be told what to do. I have not (yet) read Aristotle (is this the Nicomachean Ethics?), but morality as enlightened prudence sounds right to me.
1815 GREEN
You see - you can prove it, with one of these. You just need to know the wavelength of the light which will tell you where it is on teh spectrum which will (in most cases) be able to be proved to be a certain colour (except for those "No it's yellow" "no it's not it's orange" conversations.)
[st d] Whether you can prove it or not wasn't the point - it was whether you needed to prove it, or indeed whether you even needed to know a proof was possible.
of course - silly me.
[st d] Well done though.
You can't step into the same conversation twice...
Wow, this moves fast...
Raak] If by the case of Iraq you mean the resistance against the US/British occupation, then I'd agree that they are morally justified (without necessarily meaning that each and every one of the resitance's actions are morally justified). I suspect that's not what you mean though.
I think the core problem here is where you say "That is the key difference between empirical knowledge and moral knowledge: one is demonstrable and the other is not." If moral knowledge is not demonstrable in some way, then how do we learn it, other than by faith? And given that there are lots of possible belief systems, many of which disagree very strongly with each other, how do we distinguish between right and wrong belief systems?
Darren] I still don't see how you can know whether a proof is possible, without knowing how you are testing it.
Raak] If by the case of Iraq you mean the resistance against the US/British occupation, then I'd agree that they are morally justified (without necessarily meaning that each and every one of the resitance's actions are morally justified). I suspect that's not what you mean though.
I think the core problem here is where you say "That is the key difference between empirical knowledge and moral knowledge: one is demonstrable and the other is not." If moral knowledge is not demonstrable in some way, then how do we learn it, other than by faith? And given that there are lots of possible belief systems, many of which disagree very strongly with each other, how do we distinguish between right and wrong belief systems?
Darren] I still don't see how you can know whether a proof is possible, without knowing how you are testing it.
[Irouléguy] I think we've moved slightly from rulesets to proofs... the thing is, I don't think you need to prove a mapping is anything other then a mapping. It could be totally arbitrary, with no proof possible, but as long as you had a consistent mapping from one category to another, or, as I said above, a subset of one to a subset of the other, then that's sufficient. A ruleset doesn't need to be grounded in the real world to be a ruleset. It can be entirely abstract, but as long as it doesn't contradict itself then that's good enough as far as the logical proposition is concerned.
[Irouléguy] Indeed it wasn't! This may be getting into the stuff of flame wars, but I had in mind (as you no doubt guessed) the removal of Saddam as the moral act, and cannot see any of the resistance "actions" (i.e. suicide bombing, suicide bombing, and suicide bombing) as moral acts, especially given that the resistance is coming from the Sunni minority whose goal is Islamic dictatorship. Which of their actions do you think are morally justified?
How do we learn morality? Upbringing, practical experience, revelation, and reason applied to those. As someone once put it: "If you get it, it will be in spite of any method. You must have a method."
How do we learn morality? Upbringing, practical experience, revelation, and reason applied to those. As someone once put it: "If you get it, it will be in spite of any method. You must have a method."
self-defeating post :-)
[Raak] Hm, I don't think I'll bother continuing with this. Nothing you've suggested as an example needs more explanation than simply that humans enact moral (and legal) consequences upon one another according to the collective effect of shared or accumulated beliefs. This is the main reason muggers (nowadays) can have little success (even ignoring the fact that poverty is probably as much a cause of mugging as vice versa). Sure, all this might be the manifestation of some deeper mechanism, but it could just as easily be a bottom-up emergent phenomenon (rab can correct my terminology if I'm using this expression wrongly) that arises out of our brain chemistry and its interactions with the environment etc. etc. From what we know, this seems to me the most conservative and most available explanation. Why invoke absolute good, absolute evil? It still seems to me that you might as well invoke God. Certainly the notion of absolute good and evil, once you start trying to define them to the letter (in the case of say, the actions of Iraq's invaders and Iraq's resistance), admit of as many conceptual problems as the notion of God. Unless you can tell us more about the reasons for your willingness to entertain your leap of faith (and you've said you can't), I feel we're really just pushing words around.
More word-pushing.
[rab] Good idea re defining morality. We could take our pick from the 11 definitions, some claimed obsolete, offered by the OED. The ones it thinks are current are:
Rather a hazy selection, no?
- Moral virtue; behaviour conforming to moral law or accepted moral standards, esp. in relation to sexual matters; personal qualities judged to be good.
- Moral discourse or instruction; a moral lesson or exhortation. Also: the action or an act of moralizing.
- Conformity of an idea, practice, etc., to moral law; moral goodness or rightness.
- The quality or fact of being morally right or wrong; the goodness or badness of an action.
- The branch of knowledge concerned with right and wrong conduct, duty, responsibility, etc.; moral philosophy, ethics.
- A particular moral system or outlook; moral thought or conduct in relation to a particular form of activity.
Rather a hazy selection, no?
[Projoy] Quite. I had a think about definitions, came up with one and devised a framework for thinking about this whilst queuing in the bank this morning. Then the teller muttered something about ISAs and it all vanished. Oh dear. I also have more pressing things to worry about, in that I have in two weeks an interview for a job I really, really want and for which I expect the competition to be fierce. So I really need to pull out the stops, so if you don't hear from me it's cos I'm doing my homework.
Not posting on MC sites! Is this moral? :)
[rab] Morality: that which does not involve ISAs.
[Projoy] "Emergent phenomenon" isn't an alternative to other explanations -- it exists alongside them. For example, I am of the opinion that the mind is literally a physical process of the brain, which assembles itself by knowable (though currently almost entirely unknown) physical processes, so all the stuff we do is an emergent phenomenon of the molecules. That doesn't mean that that stuff -- thoughts, sensations, consciousness, etc. -- doesn't exist, although discoveries about the physical stuff can call into question our naive ideas about our experiences of our minds.
As a last remark, I don't want to give the impression of hinting at mysterious mystical revelations (and I cynically suspect that a lot of accounts of such are describing nothing more mysterious than a minor stroke). The experiences that I can find no adequate way of communicating are no more than a few personal development courses I've taken, following which some religious language became a lot more comprehensible, and reading in a couple of quasi-religious traditions of disputed provenance (the works of Gurdjieff and Idries Shah).
As a last remark, I don't want to give the impression of hinting at mysterious mystical revelations (and I cynically suspect that a lot of accounts of such are describing nothing more mysterious than a minor stroke). The experiences that I can find no adequate way of communicating are no more than a few personal development courses I've taken, following which some religious language became a lot more comprehensible, and reading in a couple of quasi-religious traditions of disputed provenance (the works of Gurdjieff and Idries Shah).
*sound of penny dropping*
Ahh. So you're saying that objective morality is a high-level description for a de facto emergent phenomenon? Well, we agree, then! It's only if you're insisting it's transcendent of the nuts and bolts of human behaviour and psychology that we have a fundamental disagreement.
I did say I'd shut up, didn't I? I will now shut up.
[Projoy] Actually, I'm agnostic about what it is. It might be that, and it might not be.
[Raak] You're right in a literal sense that "commands" are for those who need to be told what to do, but the point I was trying to make is that morality, if it is real, is normative. That is, it carries an implicit command in itself, irrespective of whether anyone is standing there articulating it. If it is true that there are people with moral insight who can "see" these truths, then they would also be able to "see" this implicit command and respond to it one way or the other (would you, incidentally, accept the existence of people with moral insight who nevertheless act wrongly?). Enlightened prudence (and yes, it's the "Nic Eth" I was thinking of, but any other kind too) doesn't cover it. When people say "Murder is wrong" they don't mean that it's in your interest (or even in the general interest) not to murder people - they mean that it's wrong, that you shouldn't do it, not even in an extraordinary case where it's beneficial. That's what Crime and Punishment is about. I haven't seen any argument explaining why, in the example given before, a soldier should sacrifice himself for his friends. I haven't even seen an argument explaining why I should not murder. I can imagine an argument setting out the undesirable effects of my murdering, but that's not the same thing. Jesus said "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be given to you" - but he meant that happiness comes as a result of doing what's right, that is, as a reward. He didn't mean that happines literally is doing right, and I wouldn't have thought many people would either. Purely from an empirical standpoint, how many people would agree that the happiest people in world are also the most moral?
[Darren] The guilt point is a good one, but you'd have to argue that the guilt of doing something you believe to be bad would always outweigh any happiness you derived from the benefits of the bad act, which I think would be unlikely - people generally rationalise such things eventually. Plus, of course, it's no use when trying to make an objective account of morality, as you point out, because different people feel guilty about different things.
A shame Projoy's bowing out as I think he's been entirely right throughout this. But like him I'm not sure that much headway is being made in any direction, so perhaps I'll do the same!
[Darren] The guilt point is a good one, but you'd have to argue that the guilt of doing something you believe to be bad would always outweigh any happiness you derived from the benefits of the bad act, which I think would be unlikely - people generally rationalise such things eventually. Plus, of course, it's no use when trying to make an objective account of morality, as you point out, because different people feel guilty about different things.
A shame Projoy's bowing out as I think he's been entirely right throughout this. But like him I'm not sure that much headway is being made in any direction, so perhaps I'll do the same!
[Bm] In which case, perhaps it's time to draw the whole question of "what is morality" to a close.
[Bm] Here's a thought: if immoral actions are those which we feel guilty about, then perhaps as guilt wears off the actions become less immoral! Has anyone ever claimed that a given action is (im)moral for perpetuity, or is it allowed for its status to change with time? Note that I'm not putting this idea of transient immorality forward as anything too serious, I'm just playing around with the concept to see what happens.
After all, most people would say (I think) that once you've done a particular immoral action once or twice, it becomes easier to do it later. I'm talking here about personal morality rather than any kind of universal morality, of course.
[Bm] "Command", "normative force", and "should" are just different labels for the same thing, whatever that thing is, if it exists. You can't get an ought from an is, so there are no arguments proving that one should do this or that, except from assumptions about what one should or should not do. There isn't an argument proving that you should get out of the way of a car either, only a description of the consequences, on the basis of which everyone is free to make their own response to the situation. "Enlightened prudence" (with an emphasis on the enlightened) doesn't bridge that gap, but neither does anything else. The only way to get there is to be there.
[Raak] Well, that is precisely one of the key reasons for supposing there is no such thing as objective moral truth!
Coming in during Dinner
Some people don't seem to have quite got the hang of this, you could say.
[Bm] I left moral truth off that list, because although one view is that it's just another name for the same thing, in the view I'm arguing, it isn't. It's...it's moral truth, that's what it is! And one still has a choice about whether to follow it or not.
talking of dinner
Last night I had dinner at a nice restaurant called Baltic, with , among others, Sarah Atkins, who is Head of Legal at London Underground.
[st dogmael] Did you ask her about the meaning of morality?
Yes. She said that it was buried deep in the foundations of the Jubilee Line Extension, somewhere near Canary Wharf, and that LU owned the IP rights to it.
gatsos
got hit with one on the M4 on Friday eveniing - doing 45ish in a temporary roadworks 40mph zone. BATFISH.
Greetings from deepest Vermont, where the speed limit is 25mph and the hire car does almoat 20 mph without complaining. And the weather's pretty bloody hot too.
[st d] Why do I suspect that when you add "-ish" to your speed, you actually mean "+30"? :-)
Well I've just got back from Inverness and a lovely time I had too, despite it being work. It appears the Highlands haven't yet discovered speed cameras if the taxi I got from the airport was anything to go by. Rab might be interested to know the flightpath in takes you directly over Inverness Sewerage Treatment Works.
[Botherer] Did you buy a cape?
speed estimates
CdM] Funnily enough, loud mouthed as I am, I do try to drive safely. The signs were all over saying 40MPH SPEED CAMERAS etc etc so I dropped to about 50, then saw the camera and braked and got flashed so I assume I was doing about 45. To be honest I would have braked a hell of a lot harder and probably been okay if I though it would have been safe but there were cars behind me. (a speeding tikcet, caught on camera, with brake lights showing and a Nissan crashed up my ass and HGVs jackknifing left right and centre would have been a bad look)
Cameras
I was almost caught by a static camera on my way into Liverpool on Sunday; I'd been travelling down the East Lancs road at 40 (the limit), and always forget that it changes to 30 on a ridiculous junction where it's really far more prudent to be looking at the five con/di-verging pieces of road (and persons alongside/between them) than at the signage and the speedometer. It remains a 30 zone, with no real need to be so. I only thought to ask my girlfriend on imminent approach to the camera what the limit was at that point, and I think I managed to take 10mph off before it could see my plate (there were no flashes that I could discern). Thankfully there was no-one close behind. The camera is placed on a flyover between the run-offs to and from one of the tunnels, so again my concentration really would be more use on other aspects of my driving than the speedometer and signage.
I was also pulled over for the first time on the M62 on Friday for (in my eyes, obviously) mostly unjustified reasons, at least partially caused by the officer doing the pulling. Thankfully he was only in the mood to administer a lecture, and then had to extricate me from the far more dangerous situation he'd left me in - he'd pulled me over behind a broken down van in the hard shoulder on a exit filter lane to Warrington. This involved both of us reversing down the hard shoulder(!), then him madly waving people out of the filter lane before pulling out into it at 3mph(!) so that I could get out and 'safely' build speed and pull back out of the filter-off lane. Which I'm fairly sure is an offense, due to the markings on the road, but that was what he'd told me to do(!).
I wrote an overly long-winded explanation. Click here to see it. I pretty much know what's going on around me, even when I haven't been able to see into a spot for a second or two. It's called induction and extrapolation. Well, I think it is, and on that point I think I'm in pretty much the ideal place for correction. Sorry, I needed to vent. My girlfriend got sick of it after about half an hour.
[PJ] Cape and Top Hat, brushed up my tails...
coptastic
nik] he sounds like a cunt of the very first order. You should write a letter of complaint.
If he'd actually booked me for something, then maybe. As it was, he just seemed to be something of a busy-body. I think I've pretty much worked it out of my system now. Only taken a week! :/
(Nik) Dear me, pulled over by a bumptious cop and given a lecture. Get over it FFS.
Er, did I not say I'd gotten over it? In the post before yours? Which was days before your post? In response to st d, posting several days after my original post? Can I direct statements including the word 'fuck' at you too? Can I? It's big and clever.
orders of c....
nik] sounds like he didnt give you a ticket because he knew he wouldnt get away with it. Still ranks pretty highly with me or he wouldn't have pulled you over at all.
(Nik) Try www.upmyownarse/pettymotoringwhinges.com
[Rosie] Careful now, it's been a pleasingly long time since we had a full-blown flamewar.
[Projoy] Don't worry, I've never been good at flamewars. They require far too much effort and a short-term memory capable of remembering that I'm participating in one.
driven up the wall
[pettymotoringwhinges] Yes please! I have loads . . .
flamewars
not sure i ever remember one on here, it does seem that you are spoiling needlessly for a reaction though, rosie.
(Projoy) No flamewar. I've made my point, which stands.
Point standing?
No, I'm sorry, Rosie. A point simply isn't stable; it would tip over.
[SM] It depends which way up you stand it.
(SM, Darren) Points mean prizes. (wearily) What do points mean?
PRIZES!!
hooray. I would like to win a very fast loud car and drive it about extremely fast with music blaring.
[st d] If the exhaust drops off your Peugeot and you point it downhill with Take That turned up to full bifters, that's what you'll have.
Peugeot Exhausts
[pen] Shirley you mean when the exhaust drops off your Peugeot?
[Botherer] Have you seen the amount of string holding St D's Peugeot's exhaust on?
string
that's not string, that's plastic bags wound round lots of times.
Phew wot a humid scorcher
I was up at 0530 this morning (another of my apparently weekly trips to Heathrow to collect/deliver people) and it was 17 degrees. I still think the best summer holiday I had was in the Arctic Circle. I'll bore you with temeperature updates and whinges throughout the day...
[pen] You are joking, right...?
[CDM] Nope. I have the build of an eskimau
Eskimo Nell
(pen) As long as you don't have their washing habits (nil). It's going to get a lot hotter over the weekend but you can avoid it by yet another trip to Heathrow or wherever and flying to "the uttermost part of the earth" (EasyJet, £5). See http://groups-beta.google.com/group/uk.sci.weather Mine is the first post in a thread marked "Cold Stuff". Maybe a bit technical/anorakky.
[pen] To be clear, my disbelief didn't concern the arctic circle vacation (I remember a wonderful trip to Lapland in midsummer) but the idea that 17 degrees is remotely warm, even at 05:30. Even for an eskimo.
[CdM] I sound like a complete marshmallow, but 17 degrees is at the point where I find it difficult to sleep. Flerdle will scoff...
[CdM] 17 degrees is quite warm enough for me, I can tell you. And you know where I'm going to be a month from today! Ha! Oh dear...
hahahahahahahahaha I win.
*scoffs*
[oblig weather report] "Normal" temperature range here now is 30 to 40°C, often about 5 degrees higher, with daytime humidity usually around 60%, higher at night. It was 35°C at midnight one day last week.
Yes, of course we use airconditioners, to bring the inside temperature down to somewhere in the mid to high 20s, and to dry out the air, and to avoid situations like the one on Wednesday night when (presumably) the freezer electrics overheating in the grocery store below our flat caused a fire that almost burnt down the building. I'm not surprised it happened, because they've never bothered to kept the shop cool enough. They're paying for it now.
During the heatwave in Bris at the start of last year, I found my "can't really sleep" point was almost exactly 23°C. Even one degree lower helps.
I don't know how I'm going to cope with Tasmania in early August.
(Re 23°C: things like humidity, fans, etc would vary it, but it was interesting observing my sleeping patterns and correlating it to temperature, at that time. Hey, I was stuck in the wrong country for two months, I needed something to do. I'm not about to redo the "experiment" if I can help it. Also, here we probably have the aircons set a bit lower than I said above. We don't have a thermometer or hygrometer, so I have to go by reported temperatures, but I have no reason to think they fib.)
I have a nice little chart which shows the apparent temperature, given the humidity and environmental temperature. Fascinating reading. For example, the other day when it was 40°C and 50% humidity, for most people that gives an apparent temperature of about 55°C, or 63° if you're in full sun (that's 145°F, if you needed the conversion).
Yum.
Sleep temperatures
(flerdle) No air-conditioning in this house and the temperature in my bedroom now (9.45 pm) is 25. We've had quite a warm day. The next few nights will be warmer still - probably 27 or so in this room but to me that's no problem. You just wake up a bit sweaty, that's all.
That's quite hot
I don't know how I'd cope with 40°C, but I dream of temperatures reaching 30something here! Far too seldom.
Chilling out
[flerdle] You had best put on some weight. Tassie in August is going to be right nippy I would think.
Our snowfields finally received a dump or two over the last few days - about 500mm according to reports - so it looks like the monied classes will have something to play in again this year. Locally the nights are cooling off (4.5°C minimum last night) but the days are fine and, unfortunately, dry. The dam levels for the Sydney area are down to about 38% of capacity - not great when you have 4 million plus people relying on the supply. Water restrictions have been tightened again. Some towns west of the divide are now having to cart water in from afar. I feel for the poor farmers. There are five year old children in some areas who have never seen rain.
Yeah, thought you would be interested. Sorry.
Our snowfields finally received a dump or two over the last few days - about 500mm according to reports - so it looks like the monied classes will have something to play in again this year. Locally the nights are cooling off (4.5°C minimum last night) but the days are fine and, unfortunately, dry. The dam levels for the Sydney area are down to about 38% of capacity - not great when you have 4 million plus people relying on the supply. Water restrictions have been tightened again. Some towns west of the divide are now having to cart water in from afar. I feel for the poor farmers. There are five year old children in some areas who have never seen rain.
Yeah, thought you would be interested. Sorry.
Scepticism
(Dujon) Has there really been a 5-yr absolute drought in parts of Oz that normally receive at least some rain from time to time? Possible, I suppose. The variability is greater than in the UK. It's been dry here too, at least in the south. At Maison Rosie there have been 7 dry months running and the total is under 60% of normal for that spell and there's now a hosepipe ban. Such hardship! But why should people think they can lay water out to dry? It's a finite resource.
Correction
Sorry, Rosie, I should have typed 'four-year-olds'. But, yes, it's true, and I'm not commenting on desert areas. Even where I live it's not particularly good. This calendar year (Jan & Feb tend to be our storm months) we have had 126/144.5/61/20.5/22 and, so far this month, 0.5 mm of precipitation. Some of this arrives in bucketsfull - we had 35mm and 30mm land on different days of Jan., 38.5mm twice in Feb. and another of 54mm (the 22nd; this followed one of the 38.5mm days), 14.5mm, 12mm and 19mm on separate March days. Since then we've had 13 days on which it rained, the maximum being 7mm on May 18th.
Put your scepticism back in the wallet and save it for a rainy day. ;-)
Put your scepticism back in the wallet and save it for a rainy day. ;-)
[Rosie] We really should find a thermometer and see what it is in here; in any case, it's not 18°C. I suspect I've become better able to tolerate heat, including while sleeping, but I still don't like it.
[Dujon] I have been :-(
[Dujon] I have been :-(
Dumper truck
Call me Mr Purile, but I'm always amused when people concerned with snowfall talk about "good dumps".
Drought and sweat
(Dujon) OK. It's just that I'm a natural sceptic, based on the "95% is bollocks" principle, but this forum has a greater percentage of truth-tellers than most, I'd say. Your total comes to 370 mm or so which is a lot less than the 600 mm that Sydney is supposed to have in that period. But are you in Sydeny itself? The figure for Richmond is only 420 mm for the same period. But I suppose any deficit is serious if it's part of a long-term dry spell. (flerdle) Yes, I can't believe 18°C in your tropical paradise. I'd find that decidedly chilly. (rab) Carry on! I am equally caused to giggle when people say they had to evacuate to avoid some imminent weather disaster. Scared the shit out of them, in other words.
I can't see anything amiss with using 'dump' in such a context. One meaning of the word is 'to put down heavily', which sums up heavy falls of rain/snow/whatever. Perhaps it would have been more correct to have said 'was dumped'? My apologies for mangling the language.
I'll have to check my records, Rosie. Unfortunately I took the trouble to transfer my data from notebooks to a computer spreadsheet program and promptly lost it all when a hard drive failed. Naturally gubbins here hadn't got around to backing up the files. There were about fifteen years of it and I've not had the inclination to do it all again. I'd have to find the notebooks, too (no doubt they'll be in a 'safe place'). I'm about the same distance from Sydney as is Richmond - 80 Km/50 miles - but with about 1000' extra elevation and 30 Km south-ish.
I'll have to check my records, Rosie. Unfortunately I took the trouble to transfer my data from notebooks to a computer spreadsheet program and promptly lost it all when a hard drive failed. Naturally gubbins here hadn't got around to backing up the files. There were about fifteen years of it and I've not had the inclination to do it all again. I'd have to find the notebooks, too (no doubt they'll be in a 'safe place'). I'm about the same distance from Sydney as is Richmond - 80 Km/50 miles - but with about 1000' extra elevation and 30 Km south-ish.
Further to that lot, Rosie, if you are interested then look here for information on current Sydney dam levels.
The bit found here includes a small reference to Goulburn (I could drive there in less than an hour and a half - I think). It's not quite up to date as the town has tapped the aquifiers and is using 'grey' and recycled water quite extensively. Strange though it may seem, much of the recycled stuff is used for keeping the sporting fields operational - combined with water carted in to the town (at some considerable expense to the clubs involved).
I won't bore (sorry) others on this site with useless chatter, I'll send an e-mail in the next few days. I noticed that London is expecting well over 30°C today (Sunday) and will ask you a couple of questions about it. That sort of reading is becoming seriously warm.
The bit found here includes a small reference to Goulburn (I could drive there in less than an hour and a half - I think). It's not quite up to date as the town has tapped the aquifiers and is using 'grey' and recycled water quite extensively. Strange though it may seem, much of the recycled stuff is used for keeping the sporting fields operational - combined with water carted in to the town (at some considerable expense to the clubs involved).
I won't bore (sorry) others on this site with useless chatter, I'll send an e-mail in the next few days. I noticed that London is expecting well over 30°C today (Sunday) and will ask you a couple of questions about it. That sort of reading is becoming seriously warm.
[Dujon] There's nothing grammatically wrong with using the word "dump" in that way - it's just highly amusing to those of us with the minds of small boys. Maybe Australians don't use the word in - ah - that sense? I'm most surprised!
generalised dumping
[Bm] I don't think we do, really.
[Breadmaster] Ah, yes! No, it's not common here and so went straight over my head. Rosie's evacuation quip should have alerted me. :-(
Heat
(Dujon) You're up! So am I. It was 30.6 here at Hughes Hall (southern edge of London, 600 ft) but the highest was 32.6 at Heathrow, a bit suspect due to all that concrete. Some tasty thunderstorms in the north but nothing here. Outside it's stuck at 21 and not a breath of wind, and 28 in this room. No bedclothes tonite, Josephine.
tasmania
why are you going to dear old tassie flerlde ? where you going ? have you been before ? tassie is one of my favorite places.
tasmaina
Just visiting a relative, in Hobart; not sure what we'll actually do. Should be a bit different. Second week of August. I've always wanted to visit, but it's been a bit far away ( = expensive to get to) for just a holiday.
AVMA
This game has died. Either that or Gusset Login has. If he's not there later today I'll start it myself and you'll all suffer. :-)
AVMA
You're safe. He's back.
[Rosie] But everyone else has gone. Hellloooo?
I'm lurking!
Lurking
I'd like to play more but as I can't access MC5 from work (apparently Websense thinks it's a game!) I feel reluctant to contribute.
Snow jobs
In exciting news just to hand: It's snowing. Well, not here, but where my wife works, which is a half hour drive to my west in a place called Katoomba. This, I suspect, will mean that PaulWay will be taking anti-chilblain precautions due to his location in cold Canberra. Sorry for the exuberance - most of it stems from the fact that I'm glad I'm not there.
(Dujon) Latest from Canberra is 6°C. BTW how high is Katoomba? I can see why it's a bit cold from the excellent animations from the Bureau of Metorology, which show a series of charts and loads of other data too. The Americans, via NOAA, also provide this kind of thing, and for the whole world. Not a dicky bird from our own UK Met Office, which has now completely abandoned all idea of public service. It sells forecasts to the BBC at a huge price and operates purely on a commercial basis. It is about to shut down all non-military outstations, including weather centres. The archives are not online and its website is minimalist, quite unlike other countries' services. Its attitude to the public is "up yours - you don't pay". It is despised by all its former employees, including this one, and by a good proportion of its present ones, except the accountants, probably. The poison was first injected by Thatcher and further heavy doses have been enthusiastically administered under that prick Blair. A heap of shite and a national disgrace.
[Rosie] Katoomba? About 1000 metres, give or take a few. It's not particularly elevated in world terms but is in those of Australia. I'm approximately 270 m.a.s.l. (which is close to, but not quite, 1000' a.s.l.). Please keep in mind that Mt. Kosciuszko, our highest point, is a mere 2228 metres above sea level and that you can pretty well drive there.
Last night was 'nippy' here - about 2.5°C - and as I write it seems about 11°C (it's approx 13:30 local). That reading comes from an electronic device and one in which I invest little credibility - though it's probably close. Whatever, it most surely is cold for this part of the world.
Last night was 'nippy' here - about 2.5°C - and as I write it seems about 11°C (it's approx 13:30 local). That reading comes from an electronic device and one in which I invest little credibility - though it's probably close. Whatever, it most surely is cold for this part of the world.
prescience
[Dujon] PaulWay is in the Caribbean at the moment, or possibly the west coast of the US.
*is not jealous of the antipodeans' sub-10-degree-centigrade temperatures at all, oh no...* 20 degrees C here (NW London) at 09.00 this morning, with a high of 32C or 90F expected today. Thank goodness I'm working outside for the next couple of days. I think...
(Dujon) Thanks. Along with penelope I could do with a bit of that. Just popped out to the screen - it's 29°, dewpoint 17°, i.e. sweaty. Almost no wind and the sky is full of heavy cirrus, which should stop it getting any hotter but might stop it cooling down much this evening, alas. Tomorrow's forecast is for all hell to be let loose (thunderstorms). It looks rather tasty, but we'll see. Only 6 mm rain here this month. Good, no gardening needed. Concerning my earlier rant my sources in the Met Office seem to have been reliable; see http://northtonight.grampiantv.co.uk/content/default.asp?page=s1_1_1&newsid=6898 You can get UK Met Office charts but only via the University of Karlsruhe.
[Pen] Bah! Luxury. It has topped 32oC every day (Except Weds)this week here in the Avon Valley. 19oC ish at night. I have been sleeping out on the lawn (in my sleeping bag) all week - listening to the hedgehogs fan themselves.
[flerdle] PaulWay must indeed have a sixth sense - good luck to him. Drifting around the east coast or west coast of the U.S. of A. sounds somewhat idyllic - unless there're cyclones or earthquakes.
[Rosie] That does sound a bit, well, short sighted? I can most certainly understand the concerns of local industries - fishing, oil rigs and the like - as I have always felt that local knowledge in these matters is a significant asset. Yesterday Katoomba had a temperature range of -1°C to 3°C. Given my wife's earlier account I thought I'd gird my loins and drive up to bring her home (she often has to walk to the station - a good half hour walk and all up hill). Not having been to her place of employ previously I got flummoxed in the back street up and down dale topography. Enough so as to miss her. I then hurtled up to the railway station and again missed. Most sad. There was, however, a light side to this epic voyage of discovery: Just about everyone I saw in the main street of the town wore a beany, many were wearing fleecy lined jackets (some with Alaskan style fur collars/hoods) whilst little old me was wearing my usual short-sleeved shirt with a cardigan for insurance and no hat. It was most assuredly cold and I would not have liked to wander around for an hour in that garb, but it did make me chuckle.
To make things worth, by the way, thinking that my wife's train was long gone by the time I rediscovered my home territory, I took a cursory glance at the railway station as I passed and, seeing no one of interest, carried on home. I was advised fifteen minutes later - in no uncertain terms - that I'd driven straight past the poor lass. Honestly, you can't win.
[Rosie] That does sound a bit, well, short sighted? I can most certainly understand the concerns of local industries - fishing, oil rigs and the like - as I have always felt that local knowledge in these matters is a significant asset. Yesterday Katoomba had a temperature range of -1°C to 3°C. Given my wife's earlier account I thought I'd gird my loins and drive up to bring her home (she often has to walk to the station - a good half hour walk and all up hill). Not having been to her place of employ previously I got flummoxed in the back street up and down dale topography. Enough so as to miss her. I then hurtled up to the railway station and again missed. Most sad. There was, however, a light side to this epic voyage of discovery: Just about everyone I saw in the main street of the town wore a beany, many were wearing fleecy lined jackets (some with Alaskan style fur collars/hoods) whilst little old me was wearing my usual short-sleeved shirt with a cardigan for insurance and no hat. It was most assuredly cold and I would not have liked to wander around for an hour in that garb, but it did make me chuckle.
To make things worth, by the way, thinking that my wife's train was long gone by the time I rediscovered my home territory, I took a cursory glance at the railway station as I passed and, seeing no one of interest, carried on home. I was advised fifteen minutes later - in no uncertain terms - that I'd driven straight past the poor lass. Honestly, you can't win.
lithping
s/worth/worse.
Blue Mountains
[Dujon] I have to say that I think you have the good fortune to live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world that I have ever seen.
[BtD] Sleeping outside? Is your house better or still falling down?
bool- house is fine, just very hot. please excuse the formatting, this is being posted from a mobile.
[CdM] I had gathered you'd been here, but hadn't realised that you had visited the 'mountains'. Though they are not very high there are some majestic parts of them, for sure. I'm pleased that you enjoyed the place.
[All] I hope that everyone else has had some relief from your oppressive weather - I know from experience that it can be quite ennervating, especially the 'getting to sleep' bit. Urrk. As a matter of interest, Bob the dog, if you were escaping the heat then why the sleeping bag? You have me intrigued.
[All] I hope that everyone else has had some relief from your oppressive weather - I know from experience that it can be quite ennervating, especially the 'getting to sleep' bit. Urrk. As a matter of interest, Bob the dog, if you were escaping the heat then why the sleeping bag? You have me intrigued.
Full moon
Dujon] Its a summerbag - simply for keeping the dew off - not that there has been much. There is also the discretion factor as I sleep in view of neighbours who are very good friends of ours - but who would probably be offended by the sight of my lack of attire. Come to think of it - a topic of conversation here in the UK recently has been the unusally large moon close to the horizon...
the great outdoors
[BtD] So do you hop out the back door in your sleeping bag, sack-race style, or do you tiptoe out once you think they're asleep?
Full Moon
(Btd) The moon, full or otherwise, always looks big when close to the horizon. It's an optical illusion, which nobody can really explain. If you actually measured it you would find it's smaller near the horizon than when high in the sky, other things being equal. This is a simple geometrical effect.
Moon river
[Rosie] No, I think, surely, you would find that the Moon is the same size in the sky no matter whether it's high or low. After all, it only takes a few hours for it to rise or set - it's not going to change in apparent size as it does so. The apparent growth of the Moon when near the horizon is of course some kind of psychological effect.
The reason the Moon has been looking even bigger than usual near the horizon this week is that full moon has coincided (almost) with midsummer. The Moon is full when it is opposite the sun in the sky. The sun is at its highest at midsummer. Therefore, if the Moon is full at midsummer, it will be as close to the horizon as it ever gets whilst being full. Therefore the "Mendex" or Moon Illusion is at its strongest.
The reason the Moon has been looking even bigger than usual near the horizon this week is that full moon has coincided (almost) with midsummer. The Moon is full when it is opposite the sun in the sky. The sun is at its highest at midsummer. Therefore, if the Moon is full at midsummer, it will be as close to the horizon as it ever gets whilst being full. Therefore the "Mendex" or Moon Illusion is at its strongest.
When I say that the Moon doesn't change in apparent size while rising or setting, I mean that the area of sky that it covers surely doesn't change. Obviously its apparent size does change because it looks bigger closer to the horizon, but it extends over the same arc of the sky (and indeed of the retina).
The moon should appear to be smaller when on the horizon than when at the zenith. Reason? It is further away when viewed at a tangent to the Earth's surface than from a perpendicular. This slight change is measurable though unlikely to be noticed by a casual observer.
Why we generally perceive a full moon to be larger on its rising as opposed to when it is high in the sky has often been said to be as a result of it being in proximity to our more normally observed everyday horizon (trees, buildings, horizon line) than when it's clear of such. In other words the sense of scale becomes more evident.
Why we generally perceive a full moon to be larger on its rising as opposed to when it is high in the sky has often been said to be as a result of it being in proximity to our more normally observed everyday horizon (trees, buildings, horizon line) than when it's clear of such. In other words the sense of scale becomes more evident.
Moon size
(Breadmaster) Dujon has explained what I meant by the "geometrical effect". The moon is measurably about 1.7% larger in apparent diameter when overhead than when on the horizon, other things being equal. We're simply closer to it when it's overhead. The same applies to the sun, strictly speaking, but as the distance of the sun is 23500 earth radii the effect is barely measurable even with instruments.
Peter Greenaway
reference is made to: http://petergreenaway.co.uk/games.htm
Many of the films of Peter Greenaway, at least the feature films that I have seen, have the structure of games. The best example is probably Drowning by Numbers. I have only recently discovered MC and I find the similarity to Hangman's Cricket to be striking. Does anyone know whether Greenaway has played MC?
[Rosie] Sorry to steal your thunder, old son, but Breadmaster's comment had been sitting for quite a few hours without response.
[Effable] Hello. I cannot answer your question but, on the law of averages, my guess would be 'yes'. The reason for that is that I believe I'm the only person on Earth who hasn't played a serious game of M.C..
[Effable] Hello. I cannot answer your question but, on the law of averages, my guess would be 'yes'. The reason for that is that I believe I'm the only person on Earth who hasn't played a serious game of M.C..
(Duj) No problem, mate. I've never played MC, either live or on these sites. It is essentially a performance in which the audience and panel enter into a mutual conspiracy about the complexity of the rules. Very few people I know have ever heard of it, which is rather disappointing. You could go up to anyone over the age of about 40 in this country and say "Bal-ham", and the almost instantaneous response would be "Gateway to the South", but say "Mornington Crescent" and you'd get mostly blank looks.
[Breadmaster] I just re-read your earlier post vis-à-vis (sorry!) full moon and the midsummer situation. This is not true. On average there are thirteen full moons per year. As viewed from Earth (the Sun always 'sees' a full moon) such an event can only be seen from one point on Earth and will happen at a specific time. To be technically correct a proper full moon will only occur during a total lunar eclipse, which is when the Sun, Earth and Moon are truly aligned - even then it can only be termed a 'full moon' by a person standing/sitting/lying on the direct line between the Sun, Earth and Moon at the time that this occurs.
Ooh Arr, hello Rosie. Simulpost.
I trust you agree with my little piece on celestial mechanics? Or have I mislead myself?
I trust you agree with my little piece on celestial mechanics? Or have I mislead myself?
conspiracy
[Rosie] Well, I'm very nearly fifty and I only learned of the existence of MC a few days ago. Now I'm hooked. It is as though it had been out there waiting for me to discover it, seems so right, so well suited to my motley talents. It doesn't bother me that it is so obscure. That is part of the appeal. And I am confident that many people have played MC without knowing what it is called. The pattern is a common one in many circles with intellectual pretensions.
Sprung
[Effable]
Your research, Sir or Madam, is exemplary. Welcome to the world of wannabees, couldavebeens and mightwellbees. I suspect that you will fit quite well into this society of misfits and miscreants. As a relative newcomer to the M.C. world myself, I'm quite sure that you will understand the deep and meaningful discussions, the amazing word play and generally unintelligible literary references which pepper this and other M.C. sites. Should I be correct then maybe you could help me out when I get stuck?
| "... The pattern is a common one in many circles with intellectual pretensions." |
Your research, Sir or Madam, is exemplary. Welcome to the world of wannabees, couldavebeens and mightwellbees. I suspect that you will fit quite well into this society of misfits and miscreants. As a relative newcomer to the M.C. world myself, I'm quite sure that you will understand the deep and meaningful discussions, the amazing word play and generally unintelligible literary references which pepper this and other M.C. sites. Should I be correct then maybe you could help me out when I get stuck?
[Dujon] Yes, of course technically you're correct about the full moon - I was using the term in the slightly vernacular sense, meaning the moon when it is as full as it is getting this month, as it were.
Living in Norfolk and often driving through the fens, I have frequently seen "full" moons on the horizion and they never look any bigger than when it is up in the sky. The moon does look huge however when it is a very fine crescent rising just before or setting just after the sun on a red sky.
mooning.
[Boolbar] Do you have only one good eye? The "moon illusion" is much less if you close one eye (or really only see well out of one), or stand on your head. If you don't want to stand on your head, you could bend over and look through your legs. Noone would think you're strange. Honest.
[flerdle] No-one is normal in Norfolk, so such behaviour would be ignored, or even actively encouraged. I have two good eyes last time I looked, although one looked bigger than the other . . . .
[Boolbar] Does the eye look bigger when it's closer to the horizon?
Sprang
[Dujon] I answer to neither Sir nor Madam but will admit to the y chromosome. It is possible that my participation will be of some small benefit to the community.
Full moons and chromosomes
(Duj) Strictly speaking you're correct but the term Full Moon is used, even technically, to mean that the ecliptic longitude of the moon is 180° more (or less) than the sun, whatever its latitude (-5° at the last full moon). (Effable) To save you putting your foot in it, so to speak, I too must admit to the Y-chromosome. There is at least one other person here who does the same. But beware; there are people here with no Y-chromosome whatever, some, moreover, with non-gender-specific monickers. Truly a minefield. :-)
Stale games
This site has had the same games on the front page for an offally long time. Time for a bit of turnover, perhaps?
stereotypes
[Rosie] I really don't mind. I'll watch my step and try to be PC.
[SM] You Know You're Getting Old... is unkillable
[SM] S'true. We've tried everything.
Which, I suppose, is ironic in a way. You know you're getting old when you stop caring about killing games, since you expect even the short ones to outlive you.
Death to...
I have tried to dispose of the Furcation game, but we have another non-standard winning move situation.
I think that one might be protected by administrative fiat. Still, I must admit that the prospect of my ever making the promised move is not getting greater as time goes on.
By Thunder!
Wow - last night in Herts was the most spectacular display of lightning... torrential rain, at least half an inch... whoooo-wee! Marvellous. Anyone else get anything ?
[pen] I got a nice bit of fish for tea.
[pen] I got a squash racket for my birthday.
castrated ram
[pen] I got leaks. The lightning was rather good though, very blue in colour.
Balls
Pen] Notmrsbobthedog claims to have seen ball lightning. She was out making sure the chickens were safe when there was a massive boom. Looking up she saw what she described as a lightbulb-shaped white glow which hung in the air for a few seconds after the strike.
Meanwhile, I was stuck in Brum, attempting to get the train back after a trip to York. I was sat in a metal hanger during the best of the storm. Sadly, the Selfridges building escaped divine judgement. All trains (including mine) were cancelled for two hours due to the weather. I got home very late.
Meanwhile, I was stuck in Brum, attempting to get the train back after a trip to York. I was sat in a metal hanger during the best of the storm. Sadly, the Selfridges building escaped divine judgement. All trains (including mine) were cancelled for two hours due to the weather. I got home very late.
Goodness Gracious etc...
[Btd] woweee.
[Chalks] Good idea. I'd fish the fish out of the freezer if I was going to be in tonight, but Flatmate's mum is taking us out for dinner - local chinese does THE BEST Szechuan Stir-fried green beans with salt and pepper.
[Tuj] Happy Birthday. Are you going to play grown-up squash? ;o) I once got through to the country trials in my younger, squash-playing days, mainly due to my killer serve which I could drop dead in the back corner. Unfortunately the rest of my game let me down. But I enjoyed the acoustics in the squash court - my best friend and I would spend an hour singing songs from The Jam, Duran Duran, The Teardrop Explodes and Gary Numan rather than playing squash.
[Boolbar] Leaks? Oh dear. The husband of one of my colleagues, in the midst of a huge house-improvement project, of which he is very capable, chose yesterday to take off the roofs off their porch and garage. Ooops.
[Chalks] Good idea. I'd fish the fish out of the freezer if I was going to be in tonight, but Flatmate's mum is taking us out for dinner - local chinese does THE BEST Szechuan Stir-fried green beans with salt and pepper.
[Tuj] Happy Birthday. Are you going to play grown-up squash? ;o) I once got through to the country trials in my younger, squash-playing days, mainly due to my killer serve which I could drop dead in the back corner. Unfortunately the rest of my game let me down. But I enjoyed the acoustics in the squash court - my best friend and I would spend an hour singing songs from The Jam, Duran Duran, The Teardrop Explodes and Gary Numan rather than playing squash.
[Boolbar] Leaks? Oh dear. The husband of one of my colleagues, in the midst of a huge house-improvement project, of which he is very capable, chose yesterday to take off the roofs off their porch and garage. Ooops.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Birmingham, here is an image of the Selfridges building on the new Bull Ring.
The term Bimbo architecture has been used in association with this building.
Bimbo Architecture means buildings designed to attract customers but lacking in architectural integrity. RIBA president Maxwell Hutchinson said: “Bimbo architecture has a big smile and a pretty face but nothing between the ears. It is ‘hi-tech’ architecture without the tech and with an exclamation mark after the ‘Hi’ “.
The term Bimbo architecture has been used in association with this building.
Bimbo Architecture means buildings designed to attract customers but lacking in architectural integrity. RIBA president Maxwell Hutchinson said: “Bimbo architecture has a big smile and a pretty face but nothing between the ears. It is ‘hi-tech’ architecture without the tech and with an exclamation mark after the ‘Hi’ “.
Bimbo architecture
Wow, that's ugly. I don't think the lens helped here but still ... are people expected to shop here or is it an office building? It looks like something from a bad SciFi movie. "The Blob That Ate Bull Ring!"
[Effable] I've never been there but I understand it is for shopping and not purely offices. For what it's worth, I quite like it.
speaking from experience
Bull Selfridges Ring - it's much nicer in the flesh.
What a visual insult! Come friendly bombs and fall on Birmingham. It makes Croydon look like a pretty little market town, which it ain't.
At the risk of offending someone, that looks about as attractive as a beached whale.
[Duj and other detractors] Like most things - the edifice needs to be viewed in context.
[pen : hot beans] - how's your digestive system this morning?
[Chalky] But OTOH, I like it just on its own. [Btd] I can't resist asking (in the typical debate-starting manner) why this bit of architecture is less intelligent than, say, St Paul's Cathedral. The best reason I can think of is that while this building looks like a jokily scaled-up sequinned amoeba, St Paul's Cathedral looks like, well, a cathedral - which depending on your POV suggests that Christopher Wren was less decadent than Future Systems. Also, some architecture critics have pointed out that Selfridge's is basically a shell-concept, with little of architectural interest inside it, so not a coherent bit of architecture? Are these your reasons for disliking it?
Architectural integrity
What does Maxwell Hutchinson mean by "architectural integrity"? To me, that would mean "it satisfies the purpose it was built for, keeps out the rain, and doesn't fall down", but he appears to have some moral concept in mind. Googling for some reviews of the place, I didn't see much mention of whether it works in that sense. I did see a lot of photography that one might accuse of lacking in architectural integrity, i.e. shots taken from unusual angles that give no idea of what the thing actually looks like.
St Paul's
[Projoy] Ever seen St Paul's from above? The facade is not part of the structure, so it's a shell just like Selfridges. It gives a nice impression from the street, but it's not what it appears to be.
The Beauty of Hot Beans
[Chalks] Perfect, thank you :o)
Projoy and debate] I'm not that good at debating well because I feel very strongly about some issues and have a tendency to be both self-righteous and politically correct. However, I will present my own reasons for disliking the Selfridges building and why I think that Maxwell Hutchinson quote on Bimbo Architecture is a spot on reference to it. I would not like to think that I have offended anyone (as I have done when I fail to understand why people should play golf, wash their car on a Sunday, get married, get pierced, get tattoos, wear high heels or do any of the other multitude of bizarre things people do unquestioningly in order to comply with a convention.
I have no idea whether St Paul’s is good Architecture. It has stood the test of time in terms of its foundations and stability, it is a huge and well laid out edifice with some stunning work by a range of crafts people, it has a fascinating and well documented history.
My first reaction to the Selfridges building was ‘wow!’ It really is impressive. It is not out of place and it fits the nature of what it contains. My issues are more to do with the nature of consumption to which it is a cathedral. In one respect, I can see that there is some validity in the design. The shallowness of the outside is perfectly complimented by what it contains.
There is no reason for its appearance other than to attract consumers. It is simply a fashion statement. I have no idea how long it will last, but if its predecessor (which was greeted with similar acclaim when it was built) is any reference, it will be pulled down in 2030 amid claims that it is an eyesore. The building materials may be novel, but are not sustainable or easily repaired or updated. There are already worn and grubby areas. Despite this, I hope that it does survive, as an historical reference to the fashion of the age and so that no more hardcore, plastic reinforced concrete and fibreglass is dug into land-fills and left to contaminate the countryside.
I have no issue at all with the look of the building (apart from the fact it will get very mucky very quickly) and I would have welcomed a far more radical design (something by Anish Kapoor would have been perfect) had there been any thought to social and environmental sustainability when it was built.
I have no idea whether St Paul’s is good Architecture. It has stood the test of time in terms of its foundations and stability, it is a huge and well laid out edifice with some stunning work by a range of crafts people, it has a fascinating and well documented history.
My first reaction to the Selfridges building was ‘wow!’ It really is impressive. It is not out of place and it fits the nature of what it contains. My issues are more to do with the nature of consumption to which it is a cathedral. In one respect, I can see that there is some validity in the design. The shallowness of the outside is perfectly complimented by what it contains.
There is no reason for its appearance other than to attract consumers. It is simply a fashion statement. I have no idea how long it will last, but if its predecessor (which was greeted with similar acclaim when it was built) is any reference, it will be pulled down in 2030 amid claims that it is an eyesore. The building materials may be novel, but are not sustainable or easily repaired or updated. There are already worn and grubby areas. Despite this, I hope that it does survive, as an historical reference to the fashion of the age and so that no more hardcore, plastic reinforced concrete and fibreglass is dug into land-fills and left to contaminate the countryside.
I have no issue at all with the look of the building (apart from the fact it will get very mucky very quickly) and I would have welcomed a far more radical design (something by Anish Kapoor would have been perfect) had there been any thought to social and environmental sustainability when it was built.
But (and at the risk of retreading the discussion about value in music) why should such a building have any purpose for its appearance other than to attract customers? And if an architect sits down and asks himself, "How can I make this building attract customers?" then why is that any less of an intellectual challenge than any other building purpose? Similarly, in what sense does it look "shallow"? I'd have thought that if it makes sense to talk about shallowness in building design, you'd apply it to buildings that are unoriginal or that look like everything else. I'd say that this building had an original and unusual appearance. Whether it is an attractive appearance or not, or one that is compatible with the good functioning of what goes on inside, is another matter, but I don't really see what "shallowness" or "integrity" or "bimboness" have to do with it.
[Bm] Well, I don't think Btd is saying a building should have a better reason for its appearance, simply that if it doesn't, he doesn't think much of it. The intelligence of architecture, I would imagine, is in the way it interacts with the intelligence of the people that use it (rather than just whether it's a brain workout for the architect, otherwise a Temple Grandin abbatoir would be great architecture). Thus if all the Selfridge's building does is to drag you in and make you spend some money, then that's not a very intelligent way to be treated. If, on the other hand, it inspires you with thoughts biology or maths, that's rather more intelligent. If it manages to combine intellectual stimulation and its function, and make those two things interrelate, then I guess it's very clever indeed.
[Btd] All seems fair enough, although I must say, I've never worn high heels simply in order to comply with convention.
[Btd] All seems fair enough, although I must say, I've never worn high heels simply in order to comply with convention.
Projoy] Nearly there. I agree whole heartedly with your phrase "If it manages to combine intellectual stimulation and its function, and make those two things interrelate, then I guess it's very clever indeed."
Bread] I agree that an architect may if s/he wishes choose to design a building with the sole purpose of attracting customers. In this case they have and I am led to believe that they glory in that. My issue is that I (personally) find that approach unethical. Regarding shallowness - I did not say that it looked shallow. It doesn't, it looks interesting. The concept is shallow - one dimensional. If Joseph Beuys had piled lard on a chair to sell lard, it may have succeeded for a while but it would have been quickly forgotten. For me, the Selfridges building is just that, only more blingy. And with consumer culture responsible for so many of the environmental and social ills of our time, disposable 'environments' are a trend I would not wish to support.
Bread] I agree that an architect may if s/he wishes choose to design a building with the sole purpose of attracting customers. In this case they have and I am led to believe that they glory in that. My issue is that I (personally) find that approach unethical. Regarding shallowness - I did not say that it looked shallow. It doesn't, it looks interesting. The concept is shallow - one dimensional. If Joseph Beuys had piled lard on a chair to sell lard, it may have succeeded for a while but it would have been quickly forgotten. For me, the Selfridges building is just that, only more blingy. And with consumer culture responsible for so many of the environmental and social ills of our time, disposable 'environments' are a trend I would not wish to support.
[Chalky] Don't take me too seriously, my comment was made from that one image. I'm quite sure that if I happened to be in the area I'd duck in and have a look at the interior.
Still looks like a beached whale though. :-)
Still looks like a beached whale though. :-)
Poo
I learnt today that I didn't get the job I spent ages and ages preparing for. That'll teach me.
commiserations
Awww - I didn't like to ask because I thought it might tempt fate ...
[Rab] but you still have the preparation. Surely it'll be useful the next time something comes up? But sorry to hear it anyway...