Is there an absolute morality?

[stevevw]

To value life is to desire to live. That's what it means whether morality is objective or not. To value wealth is to desire wealth. To value a cheeseburger is to desire a cheeseburger. To value love is to desire love.

To value = to desire = to want. They're all the same thing.

Then wouldnt that be a shaky basis for building a moral law. What we desire is morally good and what we don't is morlaly bad. Doesnt seem to follow. What we may desire "to be rich" may be morlaly bad as it may require being selfish and depriving others.

 

[stevevw]

Then the argument would be invalid.

If Y lacks a part of what defines X, then Y =/= X

P1 Hydrogen is part of water (H2O)
P2 Salt contains no hydrogen (NaCl)
C Salt is not water

But what you not considering is that moral values are not equated as physical elements. There is no physical thing lacking in Buster when it comes to valuing life. It is more an attitude or belief which cannot be reduced to physical components lacking. Lacking an attitude/belief doesn't mean Buster is not human.

That's not what "is a part of being" means.

OK then I could just change P2 into
P2 this makes valuing life vital for humans

It isn't justified by the fact that people believe its true.

Therefore they must reason why Life is intrinsically valuable if they are to make this the basis for making human life valuable and supporting this with certain Human Rights and laws protecting human life as valuable. If all ethical thoeies have Intrinsic values as their basis then this is the starting assumption and this is reasoned by considering alternatives which would be absurb. Its self-evident.

 

[Moral Orel]

Then wouldnt that be a shaky basis for building a moral law. What we desire is morally good and what we don't is morlaly bad. Doesnt seem to follow. What we may desire "to be rich" may be morlaly bad as it may require being selfish and depriving others.

No, that's not what I said. I never said anything about "good" or "bad". If morality is objective, then there are things you ought to value/desire and there are things you ought not value/desire. Whether you ought or ought not has nothing to do with what the meaning of "value" is.

 

[Moral Orel]

But what you not considering is that moral values are not equated as physical elements. There is no physical thing lacking in Buster when it comes to valuing life. It is more an attitude or belief which cannot be reduced to physical components lacking. Lacking an attitude/belief doesn't mean Buster is not human.

If not having an attitude/belief does not mean Buster is not human, then having that attitude/belief is not a part of being human.

OK then I could just change P2 into
P2 this makes valuing life vital for humans

And now you're Begging the Question (a fallacy). You can't put your conclusion into your premises.

We ought to value life because we must value life

Nope. If we don't value life, then we die. Some people choose to die because they don't value life. You can't prove them wrong to do what they did by saying, "Yeah, but you ought to live".

Therefore they must reason why Life is intrinsically valuable if they are to make this the basis for making human life valuable and supporting this with certain Human Rights and laws protecting human life as valuable. If all ethical thoeies have Intrinsic values as their basis then this is the starting assumption and this is reasoned by considering alternatives which would be absurb. Its self-evident.

Folks with terminal illnesses, who know they only have a short time left to life, and who know that time will be filled with nothing but misery are not irrational to decide life isn't valuable anymore to them. It isn't absurd to decide that ceasing to exist early is better than spending the rest of your life suffering.

If life is intrinsically valuable, then those folks are objectively wrong to end their life and you could prove it. If those folks are not wrong, then life is not intrinsically valuable.

 

[Larniavc]

So that's similar to any unknown, such as "dark matter" in astrophysics.

Poor analogy. Dark matter can be detected with instruments. I’m not aware of an afterlife being detected with instrument.

 

[stevevw]

No, that's not what I said. I never said anything about "good" or "bad". If morality is objective, then there are things you ought to value/desire and there are things you ought not value/desire. Whether you ought or ought not has nothing to do with what the meaning of "value" is.

It is when that value is intrinsic because it leads naturally to upholding certain qualities for life to exist. Its self-evident as recognised by most of the world.

 

[Moral Orel]

It is when that value is intrinsic because it leads naturally to upholding certain qualities for life to exist. Its self-evident as recognised by most of the world.

You're not listening again.

 

[Kylie]

I never said it did. Why does it matter how extreme an example he chooses, then?

Because, as I've said so many times already that I've lost count, I believe our moral views stem from the fact that we are social creatures that live in a social structure, and that social structure depends on people acting in certain ways. Like the "Killing is wrong" thing. When it comes to extreme examples, they will be things that most people share a moral position on. It's wrong to kill. Kicking babies for fun is bad. It's easy to convince people that a subjective opinion is an objective fact if pretty much everyone agrees with it.

But, if morality truly is objective, then @stevevw's reasoning will apply to ALL moral situations. I'm simply suggesting that he uses it on a non-extreme example to show that it doesn't rely on a widely held subjective opinion in order to trick people into thinking it is objective fact.

 

[Kylie]

It doesnt matter whether something is extreme or not to prove objective morlaity. The fact that you acknowledge that there is at least one moral situation where we can say that murder is objectively wrong is enough to support the argument that there are objective morals.

I never said that murder was objectively wrong.

My position has always been that nearly everyone holds the subjective position that murder is wrong.

It seems you have not been paying attention to my posts.

Remember I am making the positive claim and you are making the negative (skeptical) claim. So it is you who has to show that there is not a moral truth in every situation and not me. I only have to show that morality is objective in one example to support my case.

Actually, the burden of proof lays on the one who makes the positive claim. If you claim that morality is positive, then you must your position, just as you would have to do if you claimed that aliens were living among us disguised as Humans.

1) Its a logical fallacy. It doesnt follow that our common moral values is because of living in the same society and therefore morals are subjective and not objective. I gave you independent evdience that this is a well known fallacy. This alone should refute your arguement based on being faulty logic.

You say it doesn't follow, but I've never seen any adequate reason WHY it does not follow.

2) It is also widely accepted that we all (regadles of society or culture) agree on a core set of morals. So this negates that morals are the result of social condition.

But all the people that you are talking about live in a society, don't they? Funny, that, all those people who live in society agreeing on ideas that help people live in societies...

3) I have shown you research evidence which shows we are born with knowledge of certain moral truths. Babies and infants know common moral values before they can be encultured or socialized by their society or family. Also these common moral values are consistent regardless of that culture or families beliefs or values.

Your examples dealt with toddlers, who would almost certainly have picked up on moral viewpoints from their parents and others. Kids that age soak up things like a sponge, they pick up languages far better than we can as adults, for example. It's completely plausible that by the time they are toddlers they've developed moral viewpoints of their own that they've picked up from being a part of society.

Also, your sources were contradictory. I responded to it in THIS post, which you have apparently forgotten about.

4) Social conditioning does explain moral disagreement and moral progress.

I fail to see how that shows that my position is wrong.

How can social conditioning be the reason for why a society has common morals when there is no way to reach moral agreement under subjective morality in the first place? Any social reforms or civil rights changes are usually made by non-conformists who object to the common socially conditioned values.

So they are seen as outsiders disrupting the so called common socially conditioned agreed morals. That cannot happen under a subjective system because there are no moral right and wrong. There can be no real disagreement about what is right and wrong. The non-conformist would actually be seen as a trouble maker who is not going along with the agreed values.

Because we all suffer when those morals are broken. Back when humans lived in small groups, a mass murderer would have been extremely harmful to whatever group they were in. Even today we have reports of chimps killing members who are extremely violent. This fits in to the view of morality that I've been proposing. The group acts for the good of the society. As a group, they decided that killing the tyrant chimp was the right thing to do.

Nor can morality progress under a subjective system. If morality is just opinions and nothing is really right or wrong morally and there is no objective basis to measure moral progress then moral progress cannot happen.

Andrew Fisher explains this that if there was progress this seems to imply that we are somehow moving closer to the truth of how the world actually ought to be. But if moral realism is false then it seems that there could be no standard or benchmark and it is hard to see why we would think moral progress was possible at all.

How can morality ever change if it's objective? That's like saying the speed of light can change, or that the definition of a circle (a line where all points on the line are equidistant from a separate point) can change. If there is ever any change in moral views, then it proves that morality is subjective! Remember, people once viewed women as inferior, black people as a lesser species of Human, slavery as acceptable and being left handed as wrong. That wasn't that long ago, either. In a few hundred years, future humanity's view of morality could be just as different compared to ours as ours is to the morality of the people of the middle ages.

 

[Neogaia777]

I think any moral rules that seek to be objective must cover a broad range and must be in general, etc, and in the examples some of you guys are using, kicking babies for fun, torturing children for fun, or any reason, etc, these all fall under one main general category and that is "child abuse" in general is wrong, etc, but then comes in the semantics or definitions, etc, and what constitutes child abuse and what does not, etc, which can be very subjective, etc...

And we cannot even begin to all come into full agreement on these moral rules until we all agree on the same semantics and definitions the same, etc, and that could be a lot of writing to write into law even after that or even then, a lot of writing to write them all out, which is law evolving along the way BTW.... Just thought I'd note that, etc, for the OT sake, etc...

I used the example of murder in the other thread "where is the objective morality" just a little bit ago in this forum, and said how I defined it, etc, but "child abuse" I think is even a little more tricky for all humans everywhere to all agree on, especially when our semantics and definitions in general are not even the same yet, and we'd have to do that first long before we could even get into fully writing out all definitions of a full list of exceptions to the moral rule, or what we have deemed to be the general normal, moral or otherwise, rules collectively, etc...

God Bless!

 

[Moral Orel]

But, if morality truly is objective, then @stevevw's reasoning will apply to ALL moral situations.

What exactly is a "moral situation"?

 

[stevevw]

I never said that murder was objectively wrong.
My position has always been that nearly everyone holds the subjective position that murder is wrong.
It seems you have not been paying attention to my posts.

OK so if it’s not objectively wrong then we have no basis or right to tell people it’s wrong to murder. But yet we do tell them its objectively wrong to murder.

If someone said to you "it’s ok to murder" I think lie most people you will say "no its not" regardless of your subjective views. That applies “you cannot murder" beyond your subjective view and into the world onto others. That’s talking an objective position.

Actually, the burden of proof lays on the one who makes the positive claim. If you claim that morality is positive, then you must your position, just as you would have to do if you claimed that aliens were living among us disguised as Humans.

Yes so I would only have to show you once that an alien is living here and not have to show you every alien. It’s the same for objective morality. If I show there are objective morals for one situation I have then proved objective morality. Showing you additional situations is only repeating the same thing.

You say it doesn't follow, but I've never seen any adequate reason WHY it does not follow.

Its self-evident that’s what logic is. So if you make a logical fallacy that doesn’t follow then its self-evident because its faulty thinking ie you say having common morals is because of social conditioning and that discounts objective morality being a possible cause.

But you are only assuming this and have not provided evidence that this is really the case. You need to show and argue the evidence that shows social conditioning is the only reason we have common morals. You haven’t done that. So therefore your argument is refuted because it has no support only an assumption that this is the case.

But all the people that you are talking about live in a society, don't they? Funny, that, all those people who live in society agreeing on ideas that help people live in societies...

I don’t think you understand what the objection is saying. It’s saying people still have the same core morals even when they live in different societies/cultures. Different cultures should condition different moral values. But research has found there are common moral values everyone uses. That doesn’t fit the social conditioning argument.

That’s unless you want to say a giant coincident happened and everyone regardless of culture just happened to be conditioned the same. A simpler and more logical answer would be they all have a common knowledge of morals that’s been there from birth and culture or social conditioning only adds different ways to live out these truths. This also fits the evidence that babies have the same moral knowledge regardless of culture.

Your examples dealt with toddlers, who would almost certainly have picked up on moral viewpoints from their parents and others. Kids that age soak up things like a sponge, they pick up languages far better than we can as adults, for example. It's completely plausible that by the time they are toddlers they've developed moral viewpoints of their own that they've picked up from being a part of society.

Except the research shows that even 6 month olds have this moral knowledge and that the moral knowledge was the same regardless of the culture and beliefs of the parents or society they lived on. So we would expect the baby of atheist parents to not have these beliefs but that is not the case. We are born with the beliefs.
Psychologists say babies know right from wrong even at six months
“some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2010-05-psychologists-babies-wrong-months.html
At birth, babies are endowed with compassion, with empathy, with the beginnings of a sense of fairness. It is from these beginnings, he argues in his new book Just Babies, that adults develop their sense of right and wrong.
But we have found that even 3-month-olds respond differently to a character who helps another than to a character who hinders another person.
The Moral Life of Babies

Also, your sources were contradictory. I responded to it in THIS post, which you have apparently forgotten about.

Actually I did reply to that post soon after here #1995. I address your objections. The one done 2 years later was a different study so it wasn’t contradicting anything. But this is just a distraction from the point I was supporting for which the evidence shows.

I fail to see how that shows that my position is wrong.

Actually I just spotted a mistake I made. It should have said "doesn't explain" instead of "does explain".
4) Social conditioning does'nt explain moral disagreement and moral progress.

It shows your position is wrong because if people are socially conditions to live by common morals then anyone who disputes those common morals such as moral reformist are disputing and disrupting those agreed moral values.

Yet moral disagreement and progress requires disputing the existing agreed morals. That can only happen if there is an objective moral basis that we can use to measure moral progress moving from something bad to something better or good. So social conditioning cannot explain moral progress and disagreement.

Because we all suffer when those morals are broken.

Then you have just used an objective basis for morality "Suffering". By relying on "Suffering" you are appealing to some measure. Yet again because suffering is subjective another group of people like in China may see suffering as good to keep people in line. Under relative morality we cannot say they are wrong because that’s how China sees things.

So now we have this divided system where different cultures have different and opposing morals relative to their situation and nobody is wrong or cannot be wrong. Yet western nations live like morality is absolute when they condemn other countries like China and Africa for being morally wrong. Thats a contradiction and shows the system doesn’t work.

Back when humans lived in small groups, a mass murderer would have been extremely harmful to whatever group they were in. Even today we have reports of chimps killing members who are extremely violent.

But chimps aren’t moral creatures otherwise we should arrest and jail the chimps who are murdering other chimps" But we don't because we know that animals cannot know they have done something wrong morally and take responsibility for that. They kill as instinct, such as to be the dominate male, to kill an infant to gain a mate etc.

This fits in to the view of morality that I've been proposing. The group acts for the good of the society. As a group, they decided that killing the tyrant chimp was the right thing to do.

Humm you seem to be slipping morality into animal thinking. Even so once again you make a logical fallacy that because chimps act a certain way then it proves subjective morality.

You objected to me using this argument with objective morality. Evolution only describes how we come to know morality. It doesn’t account for why something is right or wrong.

How can morality ever change if it's objective? That's like saying the speed of light can change, or that the definition of a circle (a line where all points on the line are equidistant from a separate point) can change. If there is ever any change in moral views, then it proves that morality is subjective! Remember, people once viewed women as inferior, black people as a lesser species of Human, slavery as acceptable and being left handed as wrong. That wasn't that long ago, either. In a few hundred years, future humanity's view of morality could be just as different compared to ours as ours is to the morality of the people of the middle ages.

But when you talk about slavery changing for the better that cannot happen under subjective morality because nothing is better or worse morally. Just like preferences for ice cream no preference or view is right or wrong. So first subjective morality doesn’t fit how morals work. You seem to find this concept hard to accept.

It is only under objective morality that we can make changes for the better. William Wilberforce protested against slavery saying all men are equal. Dr King did the same for civil rights. But they were objecting to the current consensus and you can't do this under subjective morality because the current consensus that slavery was OK wasn’t right or wrong but just a subjective view.

Objective morality is about moral truths and they can accommodate change when the facts of the matter are understood. Wilberforce proclaimed the moral truth that all humans are equal as a moral truth which did not allow for subjective views. So as we come to understand the facts morla truths become more clear.

Because we are working towards some standard or truth that can only happen if there is an objective basis. For slavery it is human "Life" is valuable and with that all people have a right to a valuable "Life".

 

[durangodawood]

I never said that murder was objectively wrong.

My position has always been that nearly everyone holds the subjective position that murder is wrong......

When agreement is so widespread, there's typically more than personal opinion going on. I think thats the case here.

But the way I would put it is: murder is objectively bad for the goals that typical people naturally hold.

"Wrong" is an additional emotional layer that nature and culture adds, as an enforcement meme. Its a mix of biological instinct and social pressure. Wrong is a subjective regard we and nature are trying to instill to deter behavior we know is objectively bad for how we naturally want to live.

So its a mistake to ask whether morality is objective or subjective in a binary sense.

 

[stevevw]

I think any moral rules that seek to be objective must cover a broad range and must be in general, etc, and in the examples some of you guys are using, kicking babies for fun, torturing children for fun, or any reason, etc, these all fall under one main general category and that is "child abuse" in general is wrong, etc,

I think we can even make it more general and say all moral truths/values are rooted in human "Life"as an intrinsic value in itself. So acts like child abuse or any act we think is morally wrong stems back to doing something to human "Life" that is devaluing it or affecting its being.

If we consider we are conscious moral beings able to understand that "Life" individual lives have value in and of themselves and thus have inalienable rights to a certain quality of life worth living. We must respect that otherwise we are contradicting who we know we are which is hard to live out and comes with consequences.

but then comes in the semantics or definitions, etc, and what constitutes child abuse and what does not, etc, which can be very subjective, etc...

Not really if you consider everyone agrees there is child abuse of some sort. I think often its because we don't understand the facts around a moral issue that causes disagreement. For example a parent who disciplines their child by whipping him is not thinking they are abusing their child. In fact they usually think that it is a good think to teach them a lesson in life.

But research comes out showing the negative affects of whipping a child and people understand better that whipping a child is actually wrong. So the moral truth of wanting the best for your child is still the same between years ago and now, Its just the understanding of the facts have changed. Now we know better.

And we cannot even begin to all come into full agreement on these moral rules until we all agree on the same semantics and definitions the same, etc, and that could be a lot of writing to write into law even after that or even then, a lot of writing to write them all out, which is law evolving along the way BTW.... Just thought I'd note that, etc, for the OT sake, etc...

But I think we all intuitively know whats right and wrong morally. When we see someone being assualted, or a friend splits with his wife, or when someone doesnt keep a promise we know its wrong. For the main core moral truths its pretty clear.

But we can reason out the more complex situations. Like I said I think a lot is moral common sense. Just because we cannot know the truth now doesnt mean there is no truth that we should try to find. We might find something better than what was done in the past. We are moral beings so I think we have the know how to find the truth. In some ways its our obligation.

I used the example of murder in the other thread "where is the objective morality" just a little bit ago in this forum, and said how I defined it, etc, but "child abuse" I think is even a little more tricky for all humans everywhere to all agree on, especially when our semantics and definitions in general are not even the same yet, and we'd have to do that first long before we could even get into fully writing out all definitions of a full list of exceptions to the moral rule, or what we have deemed to be the general normal, moral or otherwise, rules collectively, etc...

I don't think its as complicated as people think. If "life" is intrinsically valuable then with that comes certain inalienable natural rights to a certain standard of life and how people should be treated. I think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights goes into detail how we should treat others especially the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We are coming to know what is child abuse. We didnt understand the psychological harm child abuse can cause years ago and now we do. So we as time goes by we get a clearer understanding of the truth.

But just because another culture may do things to children that we think are bad doesn't mean morality is relative. It just means the other culture has a different understanding (outdated understanding) of the facts or are influenced by beliefs and superstitions. When you strip away the differences in understanding morality converges between all cultures.
God Bless!

 

[Neogaia777]

I think we can even make it more general and say all moral truths/values are rooted in human "Life"as an intrinsic value in itself. So acts like child abuse or any act we think is morally wrong stems back to doing something to human "Life" that is devaluing it or affecting its being.

If we consider we are conscious moral beings able to understand that "Life" individual lives have value in and of themselves and thus have inalienable rights to a certain quality of life worth living. We must respect that otherwise we are contradicting who we know we are which is hard to live out and comes with consequences.

Not really if you consider everyone agrees there is child abuse of some sort. I think often its because we don't understand the facts around a moral issue that causes disagreement. For example a parent who disciplines their child by whipping him is not thinking they are abusing their child. In fact they usually think that it is a good think to teach them a lesson in life.

But research comes out showing the negative affects of whipping a child and people understand better that whipping a child is actually wrong. So the moral truth of wanting the best for your child is still the same between years ago and now, Its just the understanding of the facts have changed. Now we know better.

But I think we all intuitively know whats right and wrong morally. When we see someone being assualted, or a friend splits with his wife, or when someone doesnt keep a promise we know its wrong. For the main core moral truths its pretty clear.

But we can reason out the more complex situations. Like I said I think a lot is moral common sense. Just because we cannot know the truth now doesnt mean there is no truth that we should try to find. We might find something better than what was done in the past. We are moral beings so I think we have the know how to find the truth. In some ways its our obligation.

I don't think its as complicated as people think. If "life" is intrinsically valuable then with that comes certain inalienable natural rights to a certain standard of life and how people should be treated. I think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights goes into detail how we should treat others especially the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We are coming to know what is child abuse. We didnt understand the psychological harm child abuse can cause years ago and now we do. So we as time goes by we get a clearer understanding of the truth.

But just because another culture may do things to children that we think are bad doesn't mean morality is relative. It just means the other culture has a different understanding (outdated understanding) of the facts or are influenced by beliefs and superstitions. When you strip away the differences in understanding morality converges between all cultures.
God Bless!

Semantics and definitions, etc...

And until we can all unanimously agree on those first, we will be getting absolutely nowhere with any of the rest of the things, things like you said, or are saying, or are trying to say, etc...

And I don't agree that spanking a child is always child abuse, etc...

God Bless!

 

[stevevw]

Semantics and definitions, etc...

And until we can all unanimously agree on those first, we will be getting absolutely nowhere with any of the rest of the things, things like you said, or are saying, or are trying to say, etc...

And I don't agree that spanking a child is always child abuse, etc...

God Bless!

I think we have progressed to a great extent with something like the Universal Human Rights. It is said to apply to all regardless of race, religion, culture ect. These standards or natural born Rights are reflected in most nations Constitutions and Decarations so it seems there are certain standards of Life that everyone knows and can apply universially.

I agree are cases that require more reasoning over. But I think its important to acknowledge that just because some cases are harder to work out doesnt mean there is a moral truth to that situation. We may not know it yet, and we may find that truth later.

Even if we cannot fully define what is right or wrong the fact that we want to refine it, want to argue over it and want to improve protection of children shows we are moving from one thing towards another which reuires a truth to be found.

Yes the debate on disciplining a child is still open. You obviously think its OK to smack a child in some situations. So you must have some rational for that which is sort of a basis that you are using to measure what is child abuse and what is not.

Its the fact we disagree on this that we suppose an objective that will sort the disagreement out as both sides cannot be right. Its either child abuse or not.

 

[Neogaia777]

I think we have progressed to a great extent with something like the Universal Human Rights. It is said to apply to all regardless of race, religion, culture ect. These standards or natural born Rights are reflected in most nations Constitutions and Decarations so it seems there are certain standards of Life that everyone knows and can apply universially.

I agree are cases that require more reasoning over. But I think its important to acknowledge that just because some cases are harder to work out doesnt mean there is a moral truth to that situation. We may not know it yet, and we may find that truth later.

Even if we cannot fully define what is right or wrong the fact that we want to refine it, want to argue over it and want to improve protection of children shows we are moving from one thing towards another which reuires a truth to be found.

Yes the debate on disciplining a child is still open. You obviously think its OK to smack a child in some situations. So you must have some rational for that which is sort of a basis that you are using to measure what is child abuse and what is not.

Its the fact we disagree on this that we suppose an objective that will sort the disagreement out as both sides cannot be right. Its either child abuse or not.

God Bless!

 

[stevevw]

God Bless!

God Bless you and thankyou for you insights.

 

[Neogaia777]

God Bless you and thankyou for you insights.

You are most welcome, please think about them a bit if you can OK...

God Bless!

 

[Halbhh]

Poor analogy. Dark matter can be detected with instruments. I’m not aware of an afterlife being detected with instrument.

Re: 'Dark matter can be detected with instruments' -- No it can't.
(just an fyi, my background degree is in Engineering Physics, and I've read in astrophysics as a interest for decades.)

If you think dark matter can be directly detected (which may be a common place misconception now for all I know), just read more carefully. We can map where dark matter should be (if it is in fact a form of matter in the end), by computational calculation based on the hypothesis that it's a form a matter.

The maps you've seen (if you read enough) are only computational projections based on that hypothesis that the excess gravitation is from a form of matter.

We've not detected (not observed in any fashion) dark matter yet (and don't know when we may), but if we ever do, that will be a very notable discovery, and be up there with the most significant discoveries of all time.

So, see, the analogy isn't off track in the way you supposed at least. Having pointed that out, no analogy for God is going to be all that perfect regardless, and the analogy will fall short in some other way.

But it's still a possibly useful analogy for you to consider -- in that dark matter is for many something we think exists based on secondary effects, without ever seeing it.