It's amazing how willfully uninformed you can be.

http://www.askamathematician.com/2012/06/q-do-colors-exist/

Your arrogance, sadly, is not amazing at all.

Your link doesn't say what you think it does. It proves what I've been saying.

@Putin33 Are you saying "the law" and "morality" are the same thing? "Right" vs. "wrong" is a different matter than "legal" vs. "illegal." At any rate, the process you described shows “legal” vs. “illegal” gradually lining up with “right” and “wrong” over time. But, what is the *source* of how we judge “right” and “wrong”? Surely it is the laws, not the morality, that is changing. The laws are the “useful fiction”, and the morality is the inherent characteristic of humans. And it is this moral sense that leads us to value human life over rhino life.

And, sweet merciful navel-gazing krikey, red is defined as a wavelength *irrespective of how the wavelength is received by the eye.* It is measured in fractions of a meter. It is usually defined over the range of 620nm to 740nm. When an object emits or reflects light in this range, it has the property "red" EVEN IF NOBODY SEES IT AT ALL, IT IS RED. Gamma rays, and infrared, are also colors THAT WE CANNOT SEE (though bees can see some of that shit), and in fact *all* of them are electromagnetic radiation.

This "ask a mathematician" chap has discussing red as an experience, rather than red as a property. The experience is entirely subjective. The property that elicits that experience is a real thing in the world. Your earlier post denied the reality of red as a property of an object, which is incorrect. The red jellybean is red even when there is no red light to reflect. Your line of reasoning confusing experience with reality would lead us to believe that the universe stops existing when we close our eyes.

"Surely it is the laws, not the morality, that is changing."

Tell that to the blacks or the women or the blacks again or the LGBTQ community. Morality changes with time as well as law. Once, it was not only legal, but "morally right" to own slaves. Once it was not only legal, but "morally right" to deny women the vote and treat them like second class citizens. Once it wad not only legal, but "morally right" to segregate the n*ggers from fine upstanding white folk. Once it was not only legal, but "morally right" to harass, abuse, and deny basic individual rights and liberties to a person because they didn't conform to society's"morality". Morals are determined by society and change as society changes.

"But these kinds of definitions merely correspond to the experience of those things, as opposed to actually being those things. There is certainly a set of wavelengths of light that most people in the world would agree is “red” (rojo, rubrum, rauður, 紅色, أحمر, ruĝa, …). ******However, that doesn’t mean that the light itself is red, it just means that a Human brain equipped with Human eyes will label it as red*****."

@Draugnar Next time it isn't weird to bring up, I will ask some gay people if the condemnation and discrimination that homosexuals have experienced was ever "morally right." I suspect they will say it was always morally *wrong*, it's just that the laws and customs of society had failed in their morality. Human morality is the part of most people that is shaken and disturbed at the sight of a lynching; it's the laws and customs of Putin33's "organized society" that drive people to abandon that instinct and do horrible things.

"Are you saying "the law" and "morality" are the same thing? "

Not quite, but both are socially constructed rules.

"At any rate, the process you described shows “legal” vs. “illegal” gradually lining up with “right” and “wrong” over time."

You mean, what is legal has gradually come to conform with what you personally think is moral over time. One could easily argue that an expanding view of respect for non-human life is another example of "legality catching up with morality". You're simply projecting your own moral views as timeless moral values. Something Christians are fond of doing too.

"But, what is the *source* of how we judge “right” and “wrong”?"

Reason and shared experience.

There in lies the rub. Society determines morals. Society said that sodomy was immoral for many millenia (remember Sodom and Gomorrah)? The morals changed because society changed. You believe morals are an absolute fixed set of right and wrong sets. I believe the sets are divided into right and wrong by society and that morals are nothing but a societal construct.

@Putin33 If you had made it clearer that you were talking about the sensation of red rather than the property as defined by physicists, we would have agreed with you. However, you denied that an object could have the property red, which, when the people you are talking to assume you mean the property of reflecting light in certain wavelengths, is crazy.

Let's just drop the botched color analogy. Putin33's ignorance on the subject is more deeply evident anyway when he considered gamma rays and infrared to be separate from electromagnetic radiation, rather than examples of it.

"it's the laws and customs of Putin33's "organized society" that drive people to abandon that instinct and do horrible things."

A shoutout to anarcho-primitivism? We'd all be perfectly moral but for organized society?

Please take a visit to the rural areas of the Central African Republic, where the state doesn't exist and killings and lynchings occur on a daily basis as we speak, and explain to me how that is reconciled with your anarchistic "organized society is the cause of immorality" nonsense.

@Putin33 and Draugnar:

"You're simply projecting your own moral views as timeless moral values"

Now *that* is the rub. There is considerable scientific evidence for an innate, shared basis for morality that is *not* the result of shared experience. In that sense it is an instinct, and a timeless set of moral values (though everyone's, not strictly my own), and that is my whole point on this thread. Why do we value human life over rhino life? Same reason we make other moral judgments: it's the way we're wired.

"...preschoolers have an inkling of the difference between societal conventions and moral principles. Four-year-olds say that it is not O.K. to wear pajamas to school (a convention) and also not O.K. to hit a little girl for no reason (a moral principle). But when asked whether these actions would be O.K. if the teacher allowed them, most of the children said that wearing pajamas would now be fine but that hitting a little girl would still not be."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

"Human morality is the part of most people that is shaken and disturbed at the sight of a lynching;"

That has only been for the last 150 years. Was a time when lynchings and hangings were everyday affairs and spectator events that people brought their children to see. Look back at the early and mid 19the century and see "public hangins" of criminals for what they were... Society saying "this guy raped that guys sister or killed that rancher while stealing his cattle or robbed the stagecoach and shot the driver" or some other crime and so the people of the town came out to see "justice" served and were not at all disturbed by it.

Farther back in time, Romans watched gladiators slaughter non-Romans, fight lions and tigers, and even fight each other and no one in Roman society thought it was immoral. Hell, duels were common place for hundreds of years to defend one's honor and no one ever said the winner of the duel was immoral for killing the loser. It was considered the proper way to resolve many disputes.

@Draugnar The reason they brought their children there was to *drive out* their innate moral values described in the article above. We're wired against that stuff, and have to be "blooded" to condone it.

"However, you denied that an object could have the property red"

I still deny it. That you lack reading comprehension here is not my fault. The wavelengths have no color outside of human experience. The wavelength parameters are completely ad hoc and based on human perception. You want to drop it because you didn't bother to read what the physicist said.

"Why do we value human life over rhino life?"

*We* don't. Stop projecting your filthy values onto me. I have nothing in common with you. You're a Christian fundamentalist in pseudo-scientific clothing.

I'm on my phone so can't read the NYT article, but I guarantee the only reason the 4 year old.would say it is wrong to hit the girl.is because their *parents* told them it was wrong. At that age, we all seek parental approval so if mommy and daddy say it is wrong, then it is wrong. But that is also way children of abusers become abusers themselves. Daddy hits mommy, so hitting girls is OK. Taking one variable out of the life experience (and a minor one at that in the mental construct of a child) does not significantly alter the effect of the other variables.

Have you ever worked with pre-schoolers? They have no problem with hitting and think everything they have ever used is their personal property. There is nothing "innate" about their values. If left to their own devices they would be completely self-absorbed and violent.

I can't support Putin's attack, but he is correct that we don't value human life over rhino life. We should (and I do) value both equally. When forced to male a decision, other factors must come into play to make that decision. This particular rhino needs to be culled. But doing so should be done with dignity and without pain to the Rhino. I'm gonna channel obi here and quote Spock but expand upon it... The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, but that doesn't mean we should be obscene, perverse, and cruel when taking the life of the one.

@Putin33 Do you know what a definition is? The wavelengths are associated with color *by definition*. We assumed you were using the usual *definition* of red as the set of wavelengths it's associated with. If the topic was "qualia" you would have mentioned the *perception* of the object, not the *property* of the object.

Same goes for any other property of an object. Mass is something we perceive only when attempting to move an object, or being crushed by it. Nevertheless, an object still has mass when it's we're not moving it and it's not crushing us. To say an object does not possess a property when there is a definition of that property is ridiculous.

Don't misunderstand, I think that the killing of the rhino *is* immoral. It's just less immoral than killing a person.

Morality isn't in degrees, at least not biblically speaking. So if you profess Christianity, it is either immoral or it isn't there is no "less immoral".

Your extreme anthropocentrism prohibits you from comprehending basic English. The definition of red as being particular arbitrarily defined wavelength parameters is meaningless outside of human perception. It does not exist externally from those with human eyes and human brains.

"It's just less immoral than killing a person."

And you base this ad hoc judgment on nothing whatsoever, and project this contempt for non-human life as a timeless universally held principle.

Moral objectivists just make this stuff up as they go along, don't they?

@Draugnar
I don't profess Christianity, but surely there are gradations in degree of immorality even there, like venial vs. mortal sins?

@Putin33

"The definition of red as being particular arbitrarily defined wavelength parameters is meaningless outside of human perception. It does not exist externally from those with human eyes and human brains."

Holy shit, is that really how you think? By definition, when we say an object is red, we say that it reflects or emits light in a certain range. It reflects or emits light in that range whether we see it or not. Are you seriously fucking saying that it wouldn't emit or reflect light in that range if there weren't humans to perceive it? Or do you not know what is meant by the definition?

"venial vs. mortal sins" That is unique to Catholicism. Judaism says sin is sin and fundamentalism says the same. Whether your sin is disobeying your parents or killing a person or beating a dog, it is all the same in the eyes of the Lord, according to Jewish and fundamental Christianity.

Further evidence of the immense gulf between Religion, Communism, and Tendmote.

"Are you seriously fucking saying that it wouldn't emit or reflect light in that range if there weren't humans to perceive it?"

No. I'm saying ***That Range*** being something specially defined as *red* is **meaningless** outside of human perception, just like the names we give objects are meaningless to organisms that do not communicate in human language. For example, if Person A is colorblind, and Person B is not, the fact that Person B sees red does not mean that Person B is seeing the world more "accurately", because there is nothing objective and external that is "red". Colors are not real things. It's just a random set of wavelengths for everything that is not human on the planet, that doesn't experience the same neural stimulus that we do.

"Further evidence of the immense gulf between Religion, Communism, and Tendmote."

Further evidence that Tendmote's personal "morality" is not universal, let alone timeless and universal. He just has the hubris to think that everyone believes as he does.