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0 pointssandov6y ago0 comments

I think it depends on the message being analyzed.

If someone says "Interest rates are negatively correlated to GDP growth" then sure, I guess you need some knowledge of economics to asses the validity of such claim.

On the other hand, if someone makes a moral assessment such as "every human being should dedicate 40% of their time to helping other people, otherwise they're a horrible person" I think you can assess its moral validity from first principles. You only need to live on earth and understand the language in which the claim is made. If you apply logic correctly and have some fundamental moral axioms (which can be inducted by experience and logic), you'll arrive at a conclusion that respects your axioms.

Narratives put forth by the media, government, etc. are usually of the second kind, i.e. moral ideas. If there are facts, they're important only to the extent that they support the moral idea at hand. I think this "moral" critical thinking is much more important than domain knowledge.

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thundergolfer6y ago

> I think you can assess its moral validity from first principles. You only need to live on earth and understand the language in which the claim is made.

The only reason I think you think this is true is because your particular example is something you already think is wrong, because you constructed it to be wrong. Arbitrary moral claims are not easy to assess. Philosophy is highly complicated and knowledge-rich.

People don't assess moral claims from "first principles" in their day to day. Basically every Sociologist, Psychologist, and Philosopher would disagree with that idea.

> If you apply logic correctly and have some fundamental moral axioms (which can be inducted by experience and logic), you'll arrive at a conclusion that respects your axioms.

Let's take this piece by piece:

> If you apply logic correctly

and doing this is something that doesn't require knowledge of logic? As we are taking about knowledge-requiring critical thinking vs non-knowledge-requiring critical thinking.

> have some fundamental moral axioms (which can be inducted by experience and logic)

There's a lot going on here. One, it's disputable that moral axioms can be justified a posteriori by induction. Two, is "experience" here some thing that humans can gain without also gaining knowledge?

> Narratives put forth by the media, government, etc. are usually of the second kind, i.e. moral ideas.

I'd disagree with this unless you have some very wide definition of a "moral idea". Much of what comes out of the media and government is technocratic stuff, or entertainment, or gossip.

sandovOP6y ago

> People don't assess moral claims from "first principles" in their day to day. Basically every Sociologist, Psychologist, and Philosopher would disagree with that idea.

They do when they use critical thinking. But I also believe people don't use critical thinking in their day to day.

> and doing this is something that doesn't require knowledge of logic? As we are taking about knowledge-requiring critical thinking vs non-knowledge-requiring critical thinking.

I think logic is inducible from personal experience. The real discussion is about knowledge that one person can not (reasonably) discover by themselves (e.g. the fact that a hydrogen atom has one proton) vs knowledge that one person can discover by themselves (the fact that humans avoid pain and chase pleasure, the reason why killing other people is bad, etc).

> There's a lot going on here. One, it's disputable that moral axioms can be justified a posteriori by induction. Two, is "experience" here some thing that humans can gain without also gaining knowledge?

By experience I mean the fact of being a human being living on earth. Knowledge that we all have in common: how pain feels, how pleasure feels, etc. I said induction because that's how we create a mental model of reality, since we have no other starting point than our senses and our senses are not formal proofs of anything.

I'm sorry if my wording is not exactly the one a philosopher would use. I have no formal training in this, but I think a lot about it and hope that my point comes across.

> I'd disagree with this unless you have some very wide definition of a "moral idea". Much of what comes out of the media and government is technocratic stuff, or entertainment, or gossip.

Ok, I'll give some examples of the narratives I've seen being pushed by the media and some governments:

- People against open borders are inherently xenophobic.

- People from {list of countries} should not enter the country, because they have a higher chance of being terrorists.

- People should not have the freedom to send messages to each other without the state being able to snoop on them.

- The main cause of the pay gap between men and women is prejudice and misogyny, therefore, we should reduce the gap by any means possible.

I'm not necessarily saying that those true, false or anything, but I think they are "moral ideas" and these moral ideas will shape the world view of many people. I also think that an ignorant but insightful person can think critically about these claims and arrive at a conclusion that respects their axioms. Obviously, most of what comes of the media is not moral ideas, but moral ideas are so important that it's worth to think about them, because they are what gets presidents elected and laws passed.

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