The subjectivity of morality
Morality is made of norms and values. A moral norm is a prescription or proscription. If an action is right then its being so is its being prescribed; if an action is wrong then its being so is it's being proscribed. And if something is morally valuable, then it is morally good and if something is morally disvalued then it is morally bad. These are conceptual truths about morality and cannot seriously be disputed.
However, it is manifest to reason that only subjects of experience - minds - can issue prescriptions or proscribe anything. And similarly only a mind can value anything. Prescribing, proscribing, valuing and disvaluing, are the sole preserve of minds, as much as thinking and intending are.
From this simple rational truth we get to the subjectivist conclusion: morality is made of a subject's prescriptions, proscriptions, and values.
But of course, it is equally self evident to reason that moral norms and values are not made of our own prescriptions and values. For if I prescribe something that does not make it morally right to comply and wrong not to; and if I value something that does not invariably make it morally valuable. And the same goes for you.
Thus, though morality is subjective - which means 'made of a subject's subjective states' - it is also external to us. Moral norms and values are norms and values we are aware of, but not creating. Morality is subjective, but also external to our own subjectivity.
Thus, moral norms and values are composed of the prescribing and proscribing and valuing activity of an external mind. And for reasons that I will leave for later discussion, that mind will be the mind of God.
Needless to say, most contemporary metaethicists reject divine command theory. But they are very stupid and prefer talking among themselves about whether morality is made of biscuit crumbs or a kind of cheese.
However, it is manifest to reason that only subjects of experience - minds - can issue prescriptions or proscribe anything. And similarly only a mind can value anything. Prescribing, proscribing, valuing and disvaluing, are the sole preserve of minds, as much as thinking and intending are.
From this simple rational truth we get to the subjectivist conclusion: morality is made of a subject's prescriptions, proscriptions, and values.
But of course, it is equally self evident to reason that moral norms and values are not made of our own prescriptions and values. For if I prescribe something that does not make it morally right to comply and wrong not to; and if I value something that does not invariably make it morally valuable. And the same goes for you.
Thus, though morality is subjective - which means 'made of a subject's subjective states' - it is also external to us. Moral norms and values are norms and values we are aware of, but not creating. Morality is subjective, but also external to our own subjectivity.
Thus, moral norms and values are composed of the prescribing and proscribing and valuing activity of an external mind. And for reasons that I will leave for later discussion, that mind will be the mind of God.
Needless to say, most contemporary metaethicists reject divine command theory. But they are very stupid and prefer talking among themselves about whether morality is made of biscuit crumbs or a kind of cheese.
Comments (146)
Quoting Bartricks
What about the concept of law by H.L.A Hart?
[i]The Rule of Recognition, the rule by which any member of society may check to discover what the primary rules of the society are. In a simple society, Hart states, the recognition rule might only be what is written in a sacred book or what is said by a ruler. Hart claimed the concept of rule of recognition as an evolution from Hans Kelsen's "Grundnorm", or "basic norm".
The Rule of Change, the rule by which existing primary rules might be created, altered or deleted.
The Rule of Adjudication, the rule by which the society might determine when a rule has been violated and prescribe a remedy.[/i] Significance of Law.
I guess when you are speaking about God as mind which creates these laws is not fair. I want to believe more in ourselves and develop the rule of law because we can do it. We don’t necessarily depend in a subterfuge like God.
Yes.
Therefore rules of law are not moral laws.
Interesting question. I think depends about history and circumstances. I am agree with you criteria that somehow law could be immoral. But I defend that the problem is not the law itself but the the totalitarian. These are the ones who sadly break the law. Nevertheless, rule of law is a necessity we have to improve
We can also imagine a lawless land and it still seems clear that some acts will be right and others wrong in it. We set up laws because we think it right to do so, and people resent laws when they judge them unjust. So morality seems external to any system of laws we create, for any such system is both informed by and itself subject to assessment by moral norms and values.
Not necessarily. Law could be also useful of prevention. I understand your point that without laws immoral stuff as killing each other will still be immoral. Agree. But law goes further than this... the process of court, evidences, witnesses, etc... it is not easy as just believe in nature
There are human laws, and there are moral norms, and they are not equivalent. We can and do make moral judgements about human laws - "this law is just" and so on - but when we do so we are not judging that human laws are human laws, but rather that some conform to and others flout moral norms.
It's not an adventure if we've all been there before, it's just proselytising. You pronounce things that seem to you to be the case to be "self-evident to reason", draw some utterly trivial logical conclusions from them, then simply declare anyone who disagrees with your premises to be intellectually inferior on no other grounds than that they disagree with your premises. Narcissism is not philosophy, and I don't think a public forum should be acting as a mirror for anyone's mental self-grooming.
Imagine that someone objects to my analysis of morality by asserting that morality is made of apricot preserve. I object that this cannot be so for all manner of reasons including that even ifthere was no apricot preserve in the world some acts would be right and others wrong. They reply that though this is so we should not overlook the many useful qualities of apricot preserve. Well, yes. But the fact remains morality is demonstrably not made of it. And that applies to human laws too, I think.
Sure this is the most difficult aspect about morality. How can we prove it? Well it depends in the social context of this specific period of life. We can apply it to human laws but not as criticise but developing greater laws. I want to defend here that we can do it better and not depending about nature or God
I'm clarifying a (possible) misapprehension of one of your statements, and apprise me if you disagree.
Quoting Bartricks
What I believe you mean to say (again, correct me if I'm mistaken - I'm only inferring from your arguments), is:
Rules of law can be 'moral' laws; but they are not laws of morality.
If your statement is instead conveying that rules of law are not 'moral' laws, then I don't believe it bears a semantic consistency with its antecedent.
When professing an immorality across a particular legality (or Jurisprudence), one simultaneously professes a morality across others (that are converses of that legality);
one can't impart a moral generality across all rules of law - from the moral stature instituted by a sole proportion of them.
Minds aren't 'really' individual though. A trained/educated mind is running public 'software.' (Of course we are individual enough to occasionally introduce updates.) You seem to be appealing to a transpersonal rationality (a sort of morality of judgment-making) to deny the possibility of what you are doing as you are doing it.
They surely are: my mind is mine, yours is yours. I am not part you and you part me. I am entirely me and not in any way you, and vice versa.
Quoting T H E
I do not understand what you are saying here. I am simply noting that morality is composed of prescriptions and values and that prescriptions and values require a prescriber and valuer respectively.
If you are claiming - and you seem to be suggesting this - that the externality of moral prescriptions and values is illusory and that they are in fact prescriptions and values that we ourselves are issuing, then you are denying the reality of morality, not its need of a god. That is, if the prescriptions are in fact our own, then we have not discovered that morality is made of our prescriptions, but rather that morality is an illusion. For an analogy: if I discover that what I have been taking to be the external sensible world is, in fact, internal - a creation of my imagination - then I have discovered that the external sensible world does not really exist, but is an illusion of my mind.
Sure, we use the words 'mine' and 'yours' like that. But human minds have evolved for human cooperation, in particular for learning and using at least one language.
Quoting Bartricks
I'm surprised you don't see what I'm getting at, considering this quote:
Quoting Bartricks
You yourself see that morality is 'external.' As far as I can tell, you only cling to subjectivity (paradoxically?) because you want a single personality to be responsible for prescriptions and proscriptions (a divine personality.) But do we really need a God to come to a consensus about avoiding incest and stopping at red lights? One doesn't sleep with one's mother. One stops at red lights. One uses forks for eating. One covers one's mouth when coughing. And so on.
Even an atheist, if not playing with words, sees the reality of social mores. This is practical reality, the place where we all actually start (in a shared world, with a shared language, already trained 'into' some community.) Some actions will land you in prison. Others will win friends, open doors.
As I hinted earlier, even being reasonable involves following rules about how one ought to make judgments. One ought to transcend one's biases. One ought to acknowledge (reasonable) criticism and adapt one's judgments accordingly.
Quoting Bartricks
I agree with you about something like an 'external' mind, but that's the community, or something like what Hubert Dreyfus calls the 'who of everyday Dasein' (interpreting Heidegger.)
You don't seem to have an objection to the argument, but just an unfounded psychological thesis about my motives.
I do not 'want' morality to require God. It just demonstrably does. It's not in my interests to believe such a thing. But even if it was - even if I was the most biased reasoner in history - that would not affect the validity of my case. That's why the ad hominem fallacy is called a fallacy. You can't judge an argument by its arguer.
Moral norms and values appear external: there is no serious dispute about this, at least not among moral philosophers. So, if it turns out that such appearances are false - as they will be if we ourselves are the issuers of the prescriptions - then morality is illusory.
So, what it would take for morality really to exist, is for there to exist external norms and values. And what it would take for those to exist, is for there to exist an external prescriber and valuer. Not us or some group of us - the former are not external and the latter is not itself a mind. And furthermore, it is clear that any groups 'norms' are themselves subject to moral evaluation and are therefore not constitutive of moral norms.
That was not aimed as a criticism toward you but just a point that rationality has a moral component.
Quoting Bartricks
I don't think you've made a strong case against us being the source of our own norms. The individual mind is secondary to the community mind inasmuch as we think with shared, inherited 'software' (language and other conventional practices.) Yes, you can live alone on a mountain for 10 years and write manifestos, but that's you taking your tribal training with you...and preparing something that's hopefully intelligible to and valuable for that tribe when you come back. It's as if you are saying that conventions imply God, simply because the noun 'prescription' suggests the verb 'prescribe.'
I do not know what you mean. You mentioned biases and motivations.
Quoting T H E
No, communities are made of collections of minds. So the individual mind is primary. You can have a mind without a community, you can't have a community without any minds.
But anyway, you're just making wild and incoherent assertions, not showing how anything you say is implied by self-evident truths of reason.
Once more: the norms of any community are themselves subject to moral assessment. Therefore, they are not constitutive of moral norms.
I think it's false that you can have a reasoning mind without community.
Quoting Bartricks
IMO, my assertions are not wild and not even original. It's just 20th century philosophy. You can find similar ideas in linguistics and sociology.
[quote=link]
Their central concept is that people and groups interacting in a social system create, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other's actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalized. In the process, meaning is embedded in society.
from the actual book:
…a social world [is] a comprehensive and given reality confronting the individual in a manner analogous to the reality of the natural world… In early phases of socialization the child is quite incapable of distinguishing between the objectivity of natural phenomena and the objectivity of the social formations… The objective reality of institutions is not diminished if the individual does not understand their purpose or their mode of operation… He must ‘go out’ and learn about them, just as he must learn about nature…
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Construction_of_Reality
But I have also given examples of conventions, to point out what we sometimes take for granted, which is that we are utterly embedded in and dependent upon conventions (which no single mind is typically responsible for) that allow us to discuss the fact in the first place.
Quoting Bartricks
I don't think it's that strange that human communities can reflect on current conventions and change them. Just follow the news, especially culture-war stuff, and you can watch as the words of a specialized subgroup becomes mainstream, while other words become taboo. Is it not strange that you are confident that you can deduce God from morality while not allowing human communities to reflect on their current moral standards? Millions of brains/minds form a larger and more complex system than any particular brain/mind. The individual mind gets its power in the first place primarily from networking (I mean cultural inheritance, talking with others, etc.) If individuals can reflect on and edit the norms that are in their control ('should I eat meat? recycle? buy fast fashion?'), then naturally they can get together to criticize norms-in-common. Isn't that largely what philosophyis? One way to understand philosophy is as a kind of meta-science. What is rationality? What is science? What are the norms of reasoning? Clearly current norms are always already in place, but they aren't frozen or untouchable.
It's obviously true. Just imagine that everyone apart from you has just fallen down dead. Okay - are you still a mind and can you still reason? Yes and yes.
But again, you don't even offer any support for your clearly false claim. What argument do you have in support of the apparently false claim that minds can't exist outside of communities?
As for the rest, you don't seem to be engaging with anything I've argued.
I mentioned Crusoe already. I think you are missing the point. Even if everyone but me drops dead, the me that remains was formed by interaction with others. I think in English, a language which is many centuries old, encrusted with the trial-and-error of millions of long dead speakers. What I am, beyond the meat I have in common with less talkative animals, is largely cultural, conventional. Even if it's just 'marks on my brain,' those marks (patterns, habits, etc.) are the product of centuries of humans interacting. But forget literary culture. I didn't invent toilets or hot-water heaters. I couldn't make the t-shirt I am wearing. My point is something like: show me a human being that wasn't trained into community who nevertheless somehow cares about being reasonable or scientific (or that can use language at all.) To be a human in the full sense is to absorb mores and a language, however crudely.
If a mind knows a language, it embodies a community, carries the product of a community (its norms and conventions) within it, and uses these as the material and motive of its reasoning.
No, you're just making points that are false, but anyway orthogonal to the argument I have made.
You don't show something to 'be' part of a community by showing that it was 'created' by a community. But anyway, our minds are not created by, or dependent upon, a community. I mean, how could any community of minds ever arise if minds themselves have to be created by communities? You're putting the cart before the horse.
But anyway, which premise in my argument do you deny? Are you denying that prescriptions require prescribers? Are you denying that the prescriber whose prescriptions constitute moral prescriptions is external to all of us? Which one?
It's true that norms != laws, though clearly they are related. In a complex democracy, individuals will disagree. Some groups will thing some laws unjust, etc. We aren't the Borg, and we aren't a pile of anarchists.
The most powerful and dominant norms hardly ever come up, because questioning them is considered monstrous. It's the norms we take for granted that allow us to discuss less settled norms.
I'll trust the appropriate scientists to figure that out, but it's not as if we don't see have other social primates to look at. I recommend Monkey Thieves. Fun show! What we can do is look at recorded history and watch, for instance, the development of physics or philosophy. I think Hegel had a great metaphor. Individual thinkers come and go and contribute to a conversation that was here before them and will remain after they are gone. Metaphorically they are the brain cells of a larger thinker, a 'species-essence' thinker learning to know itself better and better.
Quoting Bartricks
I am saying that there's a kind of anonymity in mores, a 'big other.' It doesn't have to be a particular single mind. These things are somewhat fuzzy. Everyone watches everyone else and gets a sense of what to do and what not to do. Who gets praised and for what? Who gets blamed and for what? These are very much things we pay attention to. Isn't gossip a big chunk of human conversation?
Quoting Bartricks
We are the prescriber and proscriber, collectively. We all do our part. We react largely as we have been trained to react. But we can also put a little pressure on current norms to nudge them this way or that way (some much more than others.) This is like the internet being distributed over lots of computers. Any single computer is replaceable, but the protocols would be harder to replace. We might talk about the ontology of conventions here, in terms of shared habits of reaction. Most of these habits can't even be questioned, perhaps, because they aren't yet noticed.
This is how silly our exchange has been. Imagine that I had argued not that morality is made of God's prescriptions and values, but that human bodies are made of flesh and bone. You could have made exactly the same reply. Namely, that humans are social animals and that humans do not exist outside of human societies. Now, how would such silly claims address my argument thatt human bodies are made of flesh and bone? They wouldn't.
Humans enforce, discuss , and modify human norms. I don't think this is controversial. Just read the latest WaPo. Because things are prescribed and proscribed, you say there must be a prescriber-proscriber. I'm not thrilled with this logical leap, but it's plausible. I suggest that we, collectively, participate in enforcing, discussing, and modifying human norms. What, after all, is democracy? What is this philosophy forum? One type of norm is that applied to judgment making. Roughly (that's how language is, this isn't mathematics) we call someone 'rational' or 'reasonable' if they conform to those norms.
But you seem fixated on a single personality. Since you can't find a single human, you invoke God, without saying which God, and without noticing that God explains nothing. It may be that you identify 'God' and 'Reason.' In itself, that's not even a bad idea. It's been done pretty well before. As far as I can tell, it only works if 'God' and 'Reason' and the human community are fused together into some kind of humanism. Individual thinkers are like cells in a 'species brain' through which God/Humanity develops and progressively knows itself, until eventually this very idea appears in an evolving conversation that finally grasps its own essence. It doesn't pay the bills, but it offers various thrills. My own view is a reduced version of this. I don't foresee some 'end of history' or final realization, but I do see how individuals are mostly not individual at all. Instead we mostly cough up the same words in the same situations. It's against this knee-jerk background that an occasional innovation can make sense at all. It's because of our shared cognitive 'knee-jerk' responses to letters that I can confidently expect this to make at least some kind of rough sense for you.
I'm pretty sure this isn't the kind of response you want, but it's a charitable if errant interpretation of
Morality is subjective, but also external to our own subjectivity.
It seems to me that the conclusion you reach is that morality is not individual - what Bartricks calls "subjective". That morality is inherently a social enterprise should hardly be a surprise. Bartricks' error is in thinking of morality as if it bound only oneself.
Thanks! FWIW, I think B does recognize the 'objectivity' of morals but just won't grok an impersonal source like... just-all-of-us (including ancestors from whom we inherit). As you say, this should hardly be a surprise. But B's apparent tiny-soul-in-the-box Catesianism seems to resist the notion that to be human is largely to be enmeshed in the same patterns, linguistic and otherwise, with other humans. I think B (and many others) see the individual as primary rather than secondary. But what is reason if not [among other things] a kind of humility that acknowledges the frailty of every individual mind?
Yep. It is a better OP than most of his, but they all seem to share the error of the primacy of the individual.
FWIW (not much to some, surely) here's what I'd consider an old-timey version of a Wittgensteinian-flavored insight about our 'extimate' minds. Or rather our little piece of the one geist.
[quote= link]
Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (Hegel [1807] 1977: 110). Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent. That thoughts present themselves to the consciousness of individual thinking subjects in temporal succession is due, not to the nature of thought itself, but to the nature of individuality, and to the fact that individual thinking subjects, while able to participate in the life of spirit, do not cease in doing so to exist as corporeally distinct entities who remain part of nature, and are thus not pure spirit.
A biological species is both identical with and distinct from the individual organisms that make it up. The species has no existence apart form these individual organisms, and yet the perpetuation of the species involves the perpetual generation and destruction of the particular individuals of which it is composed. Similarly, Spirit has no existence apart from the existence of individual self-conscious persons in whom Spirit becomes conscious of itself (i.e., constitutes itself as Spirit). Just as the life of a biological species only appears in the generation and destruction of individual organisms, so the life of Spirit involves the generation and destruction of these individual persons.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/
Yeah it's a grandiose way of saying it, a little contaminated maybe the ecstasy of a fresh insight, but I think it has good bones.
The moral beliefs of a group of us are a) not norms, but beliefs about norms and b) they can be false, thus the truth-conditions of moral beliefs are not sociological facts about humans. Sheesh, how many times does the same refutation have to be given before it gets some traction?
Excellent question!
So let's change it to "what's strawberry jam made of?".
My answer: strawberries that have been boiled down with sugar.
Your answer: strawberries are social constructs. And/or - strawberry jam has played important roles shaping the taste of toast and as fillings for cakes for generations; human society couldn't really operate without it. Strawberry jam is therefore a social construct. Oh and here are some supposedly insightful things wittgenstein said.
A) as claims about strawberries and jam they are wrong or wild exaggerations, but more importantly b) what you are saying is mainly irrelevant to the question and your conclusion simply doesn't follow. Strawberry jam is not a social construct for clearly even if society ended tomorrow, strawberry jam could continue to exist.
A norm is a prescription. A value is an attitude.
Only a subject - a mind - can issue a prescription or value something.
Moral norms and values are not ours: I can't make an act right just by issuing a prescription to do it. Nor can you. Nor can any of us. Same with values.
So moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of someone distinct from any one of us.
And she'd be God. Not because I want her to be, but because she's be the arbiter of right and wrong, and good and bad, and rational and irrational.
No single one of us can make a norm, but the community as a whole can and does. Less obviously, no single one of us can even conform to a norm. A norm is only a norm if it's communal. In same way, no single person can be rational. The concept rational drags behind it some rough notion of a community engaged in inquiry (again, it's a norm for assertions.)
I don't mind just leaving you alone on this topic, if that's what you prefer.
But even if it was and could issue a norm, it demonstrably wouldn't be a moral norm as it itself would be subject to moral assessment.
Same refutation.
Plus, as well as being demonstrably false, you're not even engaging with the apparent demonstration that moral norms and values are those of God. Again
1. Moral norms and values are prescriptions and values
2. Only a mind can issue a prescription or value something
3. Therefore, moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of a mind
4. Moral norms and values are not my prescriptions and values, or yours, or any collection of ours
5. Therefore, moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of some other mind (not one of ours).
Which of those premises are you denying?
There's nothing strange (or at least nothing out of the ordinary) about a community subjecting current norms to assessment. We have lots of norms, more or less vague, and we often discover tensions between them (freedom versus security, etc.) Even as individuals we revise our guiding principles, in terms of still other guiding principles.
Quoting Bartricks
I've sketched for you some of the history of that idea, at least of relatively rational versions of it.
Quoting Bartricks
Both 3 and 4.
'A mind' implies a single, personal source (not warranted.)
Moral norms are my (our) prescriptions and proscriptions. Tell the truth. Don't steal. Etc. Or do you experience such things as imposed by some alien force? Obviously some norms are less established and more controversial than others. We are highly complex animals, endlessly innovating, discussing, adjusting, etc. Nevertheless, it's the deepest norms that make conversation about the more controversial norms possible in the first place (for instance, the convention of language, but also of not punching someone the moment you don't understand them or agree with them.)
When you 'assess' a norm you do so by reference to a standard - or...norm. When we 'morally' assess a community's set of beliefs (and that's all you're talking about when you talk about a communty's norms, for community's can't issue prescriptions becsaue they're not agents....but I've said this numerous times and you don't seem to get it), we assess them by reference to a 'moral norm'. It's that norm that is neither our own - for, once more, I can't make an act right by issuing a command to do it - or the community's (because community's can't issue norms, and even if they could, it would make no sense to assess them given they'd be self-validating).
So, it's now been about seven times that I have given you the same points. Perhaps you think - like many here - that simply ignoring them and repeating your fallacies and assertions will somehow constitute addressing them. But no, it won't.
You have no grounds for denying 3. You're just denying it. Well, anyone can do that. You need to refute it by showing that its negation follows from premises that are more self-evident to reason than mine.
4 is demonstrably true. Again:
1. If I issue a prescription, that doesn't make the act I prescribe morally right
2. If moral prescriptions are mine, then it would
3. Therefore moral prescriptions are not mine
Show that 3 is false by showing how its negation is entailed by premises more self-evident to reason than 1 and 2 above.
"Humans enforce, discuss , and modify strawberries. I don't this is controversial"
Irrelevant. You're talking about what people do with strawberries. I'm talking about what jam is made of.
Jam is made of strawberries boiled with sugar.
"There's nothing strange (or at least nothing out of the ordinary) about a community subjecting strawberries to assessment."
Er, what? Where have I denied this? I am saying that Jam is made of strawberries boiled with sugar. And you're still going on about what communities do with strawberries.
"We are highly complex animals, endlessly innovating, discussing, adjusting, strawberries. Nevertheless, it's the deepest jam that make conversation about the more controversial jams possible in the first place"
Again, what? Strawberry jam is made of strawberries boiled with sugar. You haven't said what you disagree with about that analysis. Do you think strawberry jam is not made with sugar? Or perhaps you think the strawberries are not boiled at all?
"I deny both. It is not made with strawberries, because humans modify strawberries. And the strawberries are not boiled, but just our strawberries - the human construct strawberries"
That is how our debate has gone. Strawberry jam is made of strawberries. Moral norms are made of norms - prescriptions (that's why they're called 'moral prescriptions').
Only a mind can prescribe or value anything. If you think otherwise, provide an example of something that is not itself a mind and that issues a prescription.
Moral prescriptions are obviously not our own. If you say "do X" that does not making doing X right, does it? That's more obvious than that strawberry jam is not just a strawberry. Here's a strawberry. Is it some jam? No, it's a strawberry. Here's a prescription of mine "understand things!!". Does that make it the case that you have a moral obligation to understand things? No.
I think you are taking your language too much granted. I think you mean
[quote=link]
transitive verb
1a: to lay down as a guide, direction, or rule of action : ORDAIN
b: to specify with authority
[/quote]
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prescribe
Here's the WHO 'laying down as a guide, direction, or rule of action' some COVID precautions.
[quote=WHO]
What to do to keep yourself and others safe from COVID-19
Maintain at least a 1-metre distance between yourself and others to reduce your risk of infection when they cough, sneeze or speak. Maintain an even greater distance between yourself and others when indoors. The further away, the better.
Make wearing a mask a normal part of being around other people. The appropriate use, storage and cleaning or disposal are essential to make masks as effective as possible.
Here are the basics of how to wear a mask:
Clean your hands before you put your mask on, as well as before and after you take it off, and after you touch it at any time.
Make sure it covers both your nose, mouth and chin.
When you take off a mask, store it in a clean plastic bag, and every day either wash it if it’s a fabric mask, or dispose of a medical mask in a trash bin.
Don’t use masks with valves.
[/quote]
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public
I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing this is the distillation of a medical consensus. Presumably you've also heard of peer review. If you brush your teeth, and I expect that you do, perhaps you can tell me which particular mind prescribed that. Who in particular told you not to pick pockets? If you can think of someone, then why should they have authority over me? But of course 'everyone knows' that one brushes one's teeth and one does not pick pockets. To not know is to be a child or a problematic adult.
I don't see anything uncommon in collective entities (organizations, institutions) recommending and forbidding various activities. It seems highly unlikely indeed that we can typically credit such recommendations to a single employee/agent. Or just consider democracy. What I'm saying is so trivial that I'm boring myself too here, and not just you.
The simple fact is that any prescription expresses the desires of some mind or minds. If you think otherwise you need to present a counterexample that is a) clearly not a mind or an institution whose edicts give expression to the desires of minds, and b) that is not question begging (so, for instance, appealing to norms of reason - such as, if you want healthy teach, brush them regularly - is question begging given that moral norms are among the norms of reason and so the same divine analysis applies).
If instead you want to insist that morality itself might be composed of the edicts of an institution, then a) the edicts of an institution are fairly obviously metaphorical and express the desires of persons composing it, or a majority, whereas moral edicts are not metaphorical and b) even if 'a' is false, the simple fact is that any institution's edicts are themselves subject to moral assessment and thus moral norms cannot be identified with them.
Of course, B, persons (I like 'people' in this context, cuz that's how persons actually talk.) As you seem to be inching toward the recognition that persons can collectively recommend and prohibit, it's a small step to zoom-out and see the most basic norms existing independent of institutions (or a small step to arguing for polytheism.) Of course I'm not identifying norms with the prescriptions/proscriptions of institutions, though obviously institutions tend to express norms. That doesn't mean people can't criticize any particular institution. As I said, we live in a highly complex & pluralistic society. Read WaPo for 15 minutes and it's all there, the world in its ugly glory. If you want to analyze all this in terms of desires and fears, that seems reasonable.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/
At the end of the day, one lives alone and dies alone. A theory of morality has to account for this somehow. Even more so when we're living in a society where those in positions of power seek to renounce all responsibility, seek to have power and take it away from the individual, and place all the blame and all the responsibility on the individual.
I am first to point out the social embeddedness in and social epistemic dependence of the individual on society. But I'm also pointing out that the society here treats individuals in a hostile, or at best, indifferent manner, as expendable. We're not dealing with a traditional tribal social situation in which individuals are by default seen as assets. A theory of morality needs to account for this.
Still, one must try! I don't think morality is "made from" norms at all. Moral norms and values are intellectually derived from feelings - feelings experienced as a result of understanding circumstances in terms of the moral sense. In evolutionary terms, moral behaviours appear long before we had the ability to identify moral norms. What is morally wrong - feels wrong first; and the why is explained afterwards!
On which level of moral reasoning, according to Kohlberg's theory, would you place the OP's arguments?
An excerpt from a post on another thread (sans links to articles, click on my usename for more) ...
Quoting 180 Proof
To 'feel' that x is wrong is to feel that it is proscribed. You are talking about the feeling, but the feeling isn't what morality is, for it is a feeling 'of' wrongness. The wrongness itself consists of the proscription, not the feeling that the act is proscribed.
The feeling that I am falling is not itself the falling, and likewise the feeling that an act is wrong is not itself the wrongness. This can be simply demonstrated if it is not already obvious - if I feel that an act is wrong, that does not entail that it is. Yet it would if wrongness was that feeling.
Anyway, the mistake you are making is to confuse the object of a feeling or belief with the feeling or belief itself.
You have no idea!
Quoting Bartricks
When something is funny, you don't think it's funny, then laugh. You might say that, but you laugh automatically, because you have a sense of humour. (In theory) When something is funny -sometimes you have to try not to laugh, because other people have feelings.
I maintain you also have a sense of morality; that right and wrong are primarily a sense, and in much the same way you automatically experience right and wrong, and can't but think wrong is wrong. It's automatic because morality is a sense. Moral and ethical system are expressions of that moral sense. A sense that can be shown to exist in primates. They have a sensitivity to moral implication.
Here's a youtube video of a monkey kicking off after being cheated at cards:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube%2c+braniac%2c+hammond%2c+monkey%2c+cards%2c&docid=608028512895249690&mid=1123BC3CE3DEE1724BAE1123BC3CE3DEE1724BAE&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
Maybe the monkey is confused too!
Quoting Bartricks
This is a misguided metaphor. Better, the feeling of pain is itself the pain.
Morality is not made of norms and values. It's made of acts. It's what one does that has moral import, not what one says, nor even what one values.
The theory you're asserting (not defending) is the metaethical theory known as 'individual subjectivism'. It's a theory no professional philosopher defends. But any introduction to ethics will go through why it is confused (though popular among - exclusively among - the ignorant and bewildered).
Funniness is individually subjective. Nobody seriously disputes that. That is, funniness is made of a feeling - the feeling of amusement. And thus if something causes that feeling in you, then it is funny for you, and there's nothing more to it than that.
Morality is not individually subjective. For if it was, then feeling that an act is wrong would entail that it is. And it doesn't, right? So morality 'isn't' individually subjective.
I mean, look at who agrees with you......Banno! I rest my case.
Experts don't defend it. Those who haven't a clue, think it is obviously true and can't fathom why anyone thinks otherwise. Why do experts not defend it? See above. It is demonstrably false. And those who think it is true have committed fallacies in arriving at that conclusion. Such as you: you confused a vehicle of awareness with an object of awareness. This, you think, is good reasoning, right? "I feel that xing is wrong......feelings are subjective.....therefore morality is individually subjective". That's a fallacious argument. But you think - and will continue to think - it is great. Yes? And Banno thinks it is the best argument ever.
Er, no, Banno. Just no. That would be a really stupid metaphor, as pain is individually subjective. The feeling of pain is the pain. The feeling of falling is not the falling. See? (No, obviously).
Here's something that's going to blow your mind: some features of reality are individually subjective....and some aren't. Pain and funniness are individually subjective. Rightness and wrongness are not. For an analogy: some things are parsnips. But not everything is a parsnip.
How do we tell which is which? Well, that's where we have to use our reason.
This argument is sound:
1. If I feel in pain, I am in pain
2. I feel in pain
3. Therefore I am in pain
This argument is unsound
1. If I feel xing is wrong, xing is wrong
2. I feel xing is wrong
3. Therefore xing is wrong
Which premise is false in the second argument? Premise 1.
Would premise 1 be false if morality was individually subjective?
No.
So, is morality individually subjective?
No.
Can you feel in pain and not be in pain?
No.
Why?
Because pain and the feeling of pain are one and the same.
Can you feel that Xing is wrong and Xing not be wrong?
Yes.
Would that be possible if the feeling of wrongness was the wrongness?
No.
The metaphor you disparage is from Philosophical Investigations, with a long history in philosophical circles. But you would not know that. Your dismissing it as "stupid" tells us about you.
Yawn.
Three rebuttals, each unmet:
From @T H E, that morality is a social phenomena, not an individual one.
From @counterpunch, that Moral proscriptions are post hoc
From me, that morality is not "made of norms and values", but of acts.
Argue something, Bart.
Yeah: morality is performative, not propositional; though we reflect on what can be said about it – 'descriptions', 'definitions', 'heuristics', 'values' (i.e. priorities), 'practical examples', etc – in order to comparatively study different moral justifications for (i.e. different assessments of the "moral import" of) what we do.
Don't you feel the least bit uncomfortable at repeatedly resorting to ad homs?
What else can I do? Your "refutation" was direct contradiction offered without evidence. So I offered some evidence for my claim - that morality is fundamentally a sense, linking a video of a lower primate with what seems to be an innate knowledge of what getting screwed over looks like, and responding appropriately. I realise it's less than ideal - because the monkey is quite likely to be socialised with humans, but Jane Goodall reports similar morally oriented behaviours in chimpanzees in the wild; grooming, sharing food, and remembering who reciprocates and withholding such favours in future.
Quoting Bartricks
Thanks for the attempted pigeonhole, but my philosophical understanding is formed in relation to a bunch of theories; one of which is evolution, and assuming evolution is very substantially correct - morality is premised in the behavioural intelligence of social animals, and this devolves in turn to physiological intelligence, and ultimately, to the cause and effect 'truth' relation between the organism and reality.
In short, morality is means of being 'correct' to reality for the social organism. Long before human intellectual intelligence occurred, looking out for each other, sharing food, grooming, fighting for the tribe - was behaviourally intelligent morality, in that it made the tribe better able to compete, and survive to breed to pass on their genetic predispositions to us.
From this fact based conclusion, it follows that morality pre-exists intellectual apprehension - and so it must be that we philosophers have spent thousands of years seeking to define morality which is primarily, sensed. Presumably, that's why, in all that time, we have been quite unable to arrive at a definitive definition of morality, because it's a sense, not an ideal or an order. And it's like - you can identity regularities in humour, you can identify regularities in aesthetics, but you cannot define what makes something funny, or define what makes something beautiful. It just is.
Similarly, you can identity what evokes the moral sense, and make a note "Thou shalt not do that again" - but that intellectualisation is not morality per se. It's a description of the workings of the moral sense, that is so uniform across peoples, it implies the existence of an objective moral order - without there actually being one.
I could go on, explaining how this conception of morality is the only one that makes sense in relation to a range of other facts and theories. I can explain how it plays into religion, politics and the development of civilisations. Philosophically, I could explain how this approach obviates nihilism, and promotes the moral good - while undermining moral crusaders. I can explain how it works in child development, psychology, law. You slap on a label and then attack what you think your label implies. You have no idea.
I have Cassandra Syndrome.
Quoting Bartricks
Well okay then, let's go back to consider your assertion that:
Quoting Bartricks
Where do norms and values come from? Do they grow on trees? Are they mined from deep in the earth? Do they fall from the sky when its very, very cloudy? Like it is inside your head!
Bravo, only - my argument is more that morality is fundamentally a sense formed in the pre-intellectual, behaviourally intelligent ancestors of homo sapiens. It does imply that moral proscriptions are post hoc, in theory, at conception, but not for long. They are soon woven into the social fabric - and tested and refined, and subject to adaptions - ideally beneficial, but regularly detrimental. Detrimental adaptions of morality occur because misunderstood, they have the authority of an objective order - as opposed to something more democratic.
I maintain that the sum of scientific knowledge is rightfully the objective order and morality is primarily subjective, but also inter-subjective, social, political - and so subject to social struggle to define. Our rightful place is the position Hume objects to; the bridge between the 'is' and the 'ought' - knowing what's objectively true, and feeling, and articulating what's morally right - on the basis of what's scientifically true.
Oh, get a room already.
Quoting counterpunch
You know London? Where does it come from? Where does London come from?
That's called a confused question that only a very confused person would ask.
Here's another:
"where do moral norms and values come from?"
They're not projectiles or cars. They're prescriptions and attitudes. Anyway, pointless saying any of this isn't it? They come from a moral foundry outside Sheffield.
There's a bit of the logic that I think interesting, but that is in danger of being overlooked; and it is similar to, but I think distinct from, @T H E's point. It's that moral judgements are inherently collective; and I don't mean that in the way that their conceptualisation is essentially a social enterprise like any other; but that they are judgements about what we, notI should do.
SO my preference for gardening is about me, and while gardening may involve being social, is not inherently collective; it is a preference for what I might choose.
But a moral preference is a preference not just for me, but for others; if it is morally reprehensible to do such-and-such, that holds not just for me but for everyone, at least everyone in similar circumstances.
One does not suppose that because one has a preference for gardening, everyone ought also garden. This is not so for our moral preferences. We do expect others to follow them.
That seems to be a crucial part of the logic, or grammar, of moral thinking.
The past.
Quoting Bartricks
The question you asked?!
Quoting Bartricks
I can explain where norms and values come from. The behavioural intellligence of hunter gatherer tribes - looking after each other to survive. Interestingly, it's why Nietzsche is wrong in his nihilism. He needn't have worried himself to death. Man in a state of nature could not have been an amoral, self serving brute - who was fooled by the weak. The human species could not have survived if primitive man were Nietzschian, and Jane Goodall et al., show that not even animals are animals!
Why can't you explain where your supposed norms and values come from?
Er, no.
Quoting counterpunch
Er, no.
Quoting counterpunch
No.
Quoting counterpunch
I did. A moral foundry outside Sheffield.
I would, but I fear that were I to condescend to forgive so minor an infraction, I should place myself on an impossibly narrow ledge with regard to my own behaviours!
Quoting Banno
Agreed. Robinson Crusoe cannot behave immorally, alone on a desert island. Moral behaviour is behaviour toward others, also imbued with a moral sense.
Quoting Banno
Right. But "everyone ought to garden" could be a moral imperative under certain conditions. "Dig for victory!" for example. I think that's explained by the fact that morality is a sense - that occurs in the context of the hunter-gatherer tribe, because as you say, that implies any particular moral proscription is post hoc. Post hoc to the facts of the circumstances.
Really? I thought norms and values came from the tears of angels, who look down upon us and despair!
Quoting counterpunch
Quoting counterpunch
You had my support.....as clandestine as it may have been, tucked away in the back of the room here.....but now I’m having second thoughts.
Better you fix it, elst the vultures get a freebie.
To get a context on the matter.
You said earlier:
Quoting Banno
This view is far from universal. For some people, for example, morality is all about laws and rules: what matters is that one obeys laws, rules, and it doesn't matter how people feel about that or how they are affected by it.
(Japanese society at large, for instance, is a good example of that.)
But the real question for assessing moral reasoning is _why_ we should do something and not do some other thing.
For example, five people can say that we should not steal, but they can have very different reasons for prohibiting stealing. One will say that we shouldn't steal, because if we do, we'll be punished, and getting punished is bad and should be avoided. Another person will say that we shouldn't steal because if we do, other people will think ill of us, and we mustn't risk that. Yet another person will say that we shouldn't steal because the law says we must not steal. Etc.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and thank you for your secret support. But I can't fix it. I must let the chips fall where they may. I said what I said, and if the reader - like Bartricks, for instance - would strip a few words from a sentence, the sentence from the paragraph, and the paragraph from the overall argument, and seek to use those few words to beat me with - I'll just have to cope with it as part of the rough and tumble of philosophical debate.
Quoting counterpunch
Quoting counterpunch
I did say it - but would have phrased it differently with the benefit of hindsight.
Well, no. The real question is "What should I do, now, in this situation?". Assessing moral reasoning - deontology - is in danger of becoming a post-hoc exercise in self-justification.
Rules don't make actions good or bad; it is easy to find examples of evil committed by following the rules. Consequences do not make actions good or bad; it is easy to justify acts of evil on the basis of their consequences.
Hence my preference for virtue ethics. Deontology and consequentialism serve virtue.
:up:
Different theories of morality saliently differ precisely on this one point: the issue of the motivation/justification for acting morally.
Each such theory prefers or takes for granted a particular line of motivation/justification:
"You should do X because God commanded it, and you must obey God."
"You should do X because it's in your own best interest."
"You should do X in order to show you're a good person."
"You should do X because X is virtuous and virtuous acts are their own reward."
"You should do X because it's the norm of the culture you're part of."
And so on.
The fact that some people sometimes lie about their intentions, motivations, justifications for acting one way or another does not detract us from operating under the assumption that people actually have intentions, motivations, justifications for acting the way they do.
Do you actually think that moral issues can be adequately addressed without reference to the person's intention?
How is that not haphazardly contingent?
If there is a way to know what one should do, why is it still a question?
I don't think anyone or anything is stupid. We all have different beliefs. Questioning divine authority might very well be a sign of intelligence.
Then how do you justify your previous measure of self-evident premises as being those which professional philosophers deem self-evident after receiving their professional consideration? Here you're saying that nothing about the status of professional philosopher protects against idiocy, insanity or sophistry. So perhaps you could explain why their conclusions about what is and is not self-evident to reason rise above average if their conclusions are so decidedly below par here.
Queer, that you could garner this from my post.
And if it is, it remains the core of morality.
Yes, it's a messy business.
Are you claiming to know the mind of God? Or simply the moral norms and values given to us? And if the latter, how do you know that whichever moral norms and values you choose are God's own and those that are said to come from God but differ from your own are not?
Imagine I come across a freshly painted sign that says "keep out". I conclude that someone doesn't want me to go any further. Analogous questions would be "are you claiming to know the mind of the signwriter or simply the signs given to us?" (Well, I know 'something' about the mind of the signwriter from the sign). And then your next question would be "how do you know that whichever sign you choose are by the sign writer and not your own?" Well, I appear to have come across the sign, not created it myself.
Analogously, like the different signs, we have different books claiming to be the work of God making different commands. Which one you choose to follow is up to you. This is not a matter of God's subjectivity but your own. The fact that you did not paint the signs or write the books does not mean that God rather than some other person did. Your imagined scenario has not demonstrated that it is God's and not human's subjectivity at work.
A sign, to be a sign, needs a sign writer, yes?
"Keep out" is not a sign expressing someone's desire that I stay out unless someone wrote that sign.
Moral norms are no trespass signs. They need a sign writer.
You are making an unrelated point, namely that sometimes the signs seem to contradict.
So what? Does that imply signs don't need a sign writer? How? How on earth does that follow?
Does it imply that I wrote the signs? Er, no. How on earth does it imply that?
So I don't know what relevant point you are trying to make. You just seem to be reasoning very badly. I mean, are you seriously saying that if you are walking in the woods and you come across two signs next to one another and apparently painted by the same hand, one saying "stay out" and the other "welcome" you would conclude "well, I must have written those myself"?!? That is just bonkers.
Yes, but the question of who wrote it cannot be ignored. Your claim is that God wrote it. So, where is it written and how do you know God wrote it?
quote="Bartricks;521155"]You are making an unrelated point, namely that sometimes the signs seem to contradict.[/quote]
It has direct bearing on the issue because we find various claims that contradict each other. They could not all have been written by God.
The question shouldn’t exist because morality should be inherently there like thinking and breathing. Whether you believe in God or not it should already be known to you.
If you need to ask the definition of morality then you are seeking justification to contradict what you already know is right. Or another possibility, there is a deficiency in the mind which cannot recognize morality in its natural state.
This is where things get confusing. By what definition of morality are you asking about? To justify to do good, to do bad, to be selfish to help humanity?
You need to acknowledge the intention of having morality for morality to have meaning?
Let me ask you this. What is your intentions to have morality? To do good? To do evil? To serve or to self indulge? Is it to justify your actions to be virtuous?
Be true to yourself and admit the purpose. Than that will be your moral code.
I rather think Everydayman’s core is pretty tidy, as a rule.
It still remains, that the ground for how he acts, in response to "What should I do, now, in this situation?", isn’t given by the situation.
"Haphazard" isn't right; one may choose to apply whatever rules one prefers. But to do even that is to choose.
Agreed, and was my point.
As for the rest, too anthropological/psychological for me. I prefer my philosophy, and particularly moral theory, separate and distinct from them. I’m old-fashioned that way.
True, he can chose his rules. But if he chooses different rules for different situations, without a rule to rule them all, he is hard pressed to assume a standard of action, being rather at the whim and whimsy of his own desires.
Gotta be a bottom, do-not-cross, line somewhere, somehow, right?
What does your brand of virtue ethics say about that?
Even should he choose one rule to rule them all - his precious - he is still making a choice, and hence remains subject to "the whim and whimsy of his own desires" - perhaps with the reassuring illusion of being rational.
Because the signs constitutive of moral norms need to have a writer if they are truly to be signs and not just 'apparent' signs.
The signs constitutive of moral norms do not have me or you as their author (for it is manifest to reason that if I order X to be done, that does not making Xing right; and likewise for you).
Thus the mind whose prescriptions to us are moral prescriptions is a mind other than any one of ours.
Moral prescriptions are just a subset of the prescriptions of Reason.
Thus, the prescriber whose prescriptions are moral prescriptions is a prescriber whose prescriptions constitute the prescriptions of Reason. The mind is therefore Reason.
As Reason is not bound by her own prescriptions, she can do anything. For what is or is not possible is in her gift. Thus with her all things are possible.
She is also the arbiter of knowledge, for 'to know' something is for there to be a reason for you to believe it, and having a reason to believe something is a matter of her wanting you to believe it or a matter of her approving of how you have come to believe it. And so she is omniscient as knowledge is constitutively determined by her attitudes.
She is also going to be morally perfect, for by hypothesis being morally perfect involves being fully approved of by Reason. And she is going fully to approve of herself as she is omnipotent and so if she disapproved of any aspect of herself she could just change herself so as to bring herself into line with her attitudes.
Thus, the mind whose prescriptions constitute moral prescriptions is a mind who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. That is, she is God.
Surely you’d grant that a virtuous man thwarts his desires for the sake of his precious, better known as self-respect.
If the illusion is persuasive enough, maybe it isn’t one.
There are too many questionable assumptions here posing as facts that it is pointless to argue with you.
Surely you’d grant that morality derives from respect for others, not for oneself...
But yes, I will agree with you that consistency - integrity - is worth pursuing.
I understand that it contradicts what I said earlier but you need to acknowledge the dark side of morality.
How ego and arrogance can cloud the mind and spread cruelty and malicious behavior. Believing your actions are righteous but may be motivated by evil intentions.
The mind is not perfect, it is flawed and undisciplined and must be treated as unreliable.
So understand yourself and what motive these codes.
I am a man of faith with no religion but even I respect certain boundaries because I acknowledge my limitations.
It is not an argument I can't challenge. It is a weak and sophomoric argument. It is an argument I won't spend my time and energy challenging.
Metaethicists are philosophers, right? Or are you trying to claim that philosophy departments don't have metaethicists?
So when you say
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
The 'experts' whose authority you're using to justify your claims that the premises you use are 'self-evident to reason' are expert by virtue of exactly the same training and testing regime you've just proven must be inadequate to ensure their analysis is even above the level of idiocy.
So by what justification should we accept their conclusions about other aspects of morality to be indicative of that which is self-evident to reason?
No, I would not. If what you say is the case, then I am morally destitute for no other reason than I hold no respect for another human. I am no more obliged to respect another than I am myself; the difference is the sense of loss associated with it, the loss of self-respect being the greatest possible affront to morality. Keeping in mind that to not respect is very far from to disrespect.
It is my philosophical contention that morality is given, as a pure subjective human condition, hence not derivable. The exhibition of it, on the other hand, by one from his sense of it, and the judgement of that, by another from his own sense of it, according to the Great and Highly Esteemed Roger Waters, “is what the fighting’s all about”.
I think, to use these terms, morality derives respect (care) for oneself by one habitualizing (non-reciprocal) respect (care) for others.
Obligation? No. That's a Kantian notion. I asked if you would grant that morality derives from respect. You're not behaving morally, nor immorally, if you are acting only out of obligation. Acting morally is not doing what you must, but doing what is good.
I won't disagree. Much of what I do involves showing children how to look after each other so that they look after themselves.
I answered to the best of my interpretation of your question:
No, I would not. It is my philosophical contention that morality is given, as a pure subjective human condition, hence not derivable. I qualified my answer with......the loss of self-respect being the greatest possible affront to morality......which indicates respect presupposes morality itself, its form be what it may.
—————-
Quoting Banno
Correct, insofar as, deontologically speaking, obligation is necessary but not in itself sufficient, for acting morally, for there must still be practical reasons for being obligated, that are not mere inclinations. Being aware of your predispositions on the topic, I won’t burden you with the theoretical predicates. Just the kinda guy I am, doncha know.
Thank you for your consideration.
It's a point on which I'd like to see where you stand, because it's not clear where you stand on the issue of intention.
Surely you mean that morality derives from respect for _specific_ others, and not for just anyone.
Those specific others being usually one's parents, teachers, other people of importance in one's life.
How do you do that?
Can you give some examples?
- - -
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly ... but what you're saying seems to describe a person whose self-respect depends on how they treat others. Is this correct?
Is there a case where that which is deemed good has been made so via a confrontation with that which is bad? And if so, doesn't that make bad good? And wouldn't good and bad then be relative?
Quoting Bartricks
That reminds me of a discussion in the other thread about "law is law" and the issue of "Natural Law." Some understandings we have about good and bad seem to be innate to our being. Sure, we have our aberrations, but generally speaking, we know better. As a universal pantheist (as opposed to universal panentheist) I've got not problem with calling it "God."
I am talking about what moral goodness and badness are, in themselves. And the conceptual truth (which doesn't really get us anywhere by itself, but just clarifies what we're talking about) is that for something to be morally good is for it be valuable, and for something to be morally bad is for it be disvaluable. And what it is for something to be valuable is for it be being valued, and similarly for something to be morally bad is for it to be being disvalued. As valuing is something minds alone do, having moral value involves being valued by a mind (the mind of God, it turns out).
So your question seems to be whether God could value something because he dis-values it. Well, I suppose it is psychologically possible for a mind to do that. One can value something and dis-value one's valuing of it. One can love hating something, or hate loving something, for instance. And so I suppose it it possible to love something because one also hates it.
However, if one hates something because one loves it, then one's attitudes express a degree of self-loathing. And I think we can safely assume that God does not loathe himself, as that would be to manifest some kind of internal disharmony and it is hard to see why an omnipotent being would put up with being like that.
So, we can, I think, safely assume that where moral value is concerned, if something is morally valuable it is not morally valuable 'because' it is also morally disvaluable. But I haven't thought about it enough to be sure. (And I am not sure why you think it implies relativism....I mean, I think moral relativism is true, but I don't see why 'this' implies it).
Quoting James Riley
I am not sure what universal pantheism is, but unless it is another label for my view, it is refuted by the case I have given.
Those who talk about things being 'innate to our being' are saying nothing clear. What do they mean? When one tries to pin them down one invariably finds that they either mean nothing at all - they were just trying to sound deep and hoped that combination of sounds might do the trick - or they mean simply that we are born with a disposition to believe or sense certain acts to be right/wrong or good/bad. Which may be true, but is beside the point when the issue is what the rightness/wrongness or goodness/badness 'is'.
I think God would not disvalue or hate anything. To the extent there is any hating or disvaluing going on, it is the relative perception of something other than God that is doing it. God's got no problem with that. In other words, we can try to do some platonic construct of the pure from which all else springs as an imperfect representation or shadow or reflection, and we can try to talk about good and bad, or valued and disvalued in those terms, but from an objective 10k feet, they are not separate. Indeed, they are complementary, one to the other, just as the tooth of the wolf chisels the leg of the deer, so too the leg of the deer chisels the tooth of the wolf. In the case of Christianity, Judas would have to be a hero, for without him, Christians would not have Christianity.
Quoting Bartricks
Universal Penentheism would have a God over gods. Compare: Universal Pantheism allows for all Gods and if any one wants to be top dog, okay. My first struggle with the distinction came from here: https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/E0/02/21/49/00001/zaleha_d.pdf nd I'm not so sure I have it, but that's what I got. My lay understanding of physics dictates that it's all true, and not, at the same time (and not) and that is what brings me to Pantheism over Panentheism.
Quoting Bartricks
That's me, the birth disposition part. And, by definition, it would not be besides the point. It is the point. The point of relativity. If you want to talk about the essence of the "good" that makes something good, that's fine. But even that essence relies upon the bad to be good. It only exists independent of bad in the relative perspective of those who are just trying to sound deep and hope that combination of sounds might do the trick.
You're doing things the wrong way around. Moral goodness and badness exist. Moral goodness and badness are valuings and disvaluings of things. Valuings and disvaluings are attitudes a mind is adopting towards things. Therefore, moral goodness and badness are made of the attitudes a mind is adopting towards things. If you don't want to call it God, that's fine. What's in a name?
But the mind whose values constitute moral values would also be the mind whose attitudes consititute the norms of Reason more generally, and thus would be Reason. And that mind would also, by dint of that fact, be omnipotent and omniscient.
So the mind whose attitudes towards things constitute moral values and disvalues is a mind who is demonstrably omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. If you have just decided in advance of inspecting the world carefully that any omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent mind that may exist in it would not disvalue anything, then all you have done is made yourself blind to any evidence to the contrary.
Quoting James Riley
Well, like I say, the argument I have given demonstrates that view to be mistaken. Morality is made of the prescriptions and attitudes of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent mind, that is what the argument - so, the evidence - seems to show. And that sounds inconsistent with pantheism as you have described it. Thus pantheism is false.
Quoting James Riley
Yep. Thought so.
Quoting James Riley
Yes. It. Is.
Here's my analysis of strawberry jam. strawberry jam is made of reduced strawberries and sugar.
Here's your point: "we are born with an inbuild disposition to like strawberry jam".
Er, even if that's true, it doesn't challenge anything - anything - in my analysis.
My analysis of morality: morality is made of the prescriptions and attitudes of God.
You: we have an inbuilt disposition to sense and believe in moral prescriptions and values.
Er, that doesn't contradict anything in my analysis. You might as well respond "It is raining". It's just irrelevant. I'm talking about morality, you're talking about dispositions to believe and sense it. Different. Things.
Quoting James Riley
Once more, no. I have trouble understanding how anyone can reason like this - I mean, how on earth do you reach that conclusion? It's borderline madness.
Apply it to strawberry Jam. Here's our conversation:
Me: strawberry jam is made of reduced strawberries and sugar.
You: we are born with an inbuild disposition to detect and enjoy strawberry jam. Therefore strawberry jam is relative.
Me: er, so? What's that got to do with what I said? And how does it imply that strawberry jam is relative?
You: some gibberish
That is where your reasoning is failing you. You are making the mistake of attributing moral values, attitudes constituting the norms of Reason, etc. to the omnipotent and omniscient mind, or what you are calling god. I have referred those play things to what I have called Natural Law, or the innate understanding of right and wrong that we are born with. They are not unlike love, or the arms and legs we are born with; that spring from an evolution that serves us (so far) rather well. But they are not empirical, or of God beyond being oppositional forces he has put in play. God would be above and beyond simple morality or other tools nature has given us to survive.
Once you see through your fascination with the toys, you will come down to earth, hard.
[quote=Hillel the Elder, 1st c. BCE]That which is hateful to you, do not do to anyone.[/quote]
The issues with it don't go away if you ignore them.
Your argument for this rests upon that which is self-evident to reason being determined by the attention of professional philosophers - a class of people who your conclusions demonstrate have no special abilities in that regard and therefore no justification for trusting their support for one of your key premises.
Put yet more simply, If philosophers have some special capabilities in reason then you should take seriously that fact that virtually all of them disagree with your conclusion. If they do not have such abilities, then there is no reason to believe your key premise that moral prescriptions are not the prescriptions of individual humans.
Quoting Isaac
They're ignorant of the argument I have presented. Do you think they'd disagree with any of the premises? If so, which one?
This doesn't seem to be how people usually think and act, though.
"Do unto others before they do unto you" and "He who casts the first stone is innocent" seem to describe people more accurately. Generally, respecting oneself doesn't seem to have anything much to do with respect for others by way of one being conducive to the other. If anything, people generally seem to conceive of respect for others coming at the cost of self-respect, so that one has to choose: either respect others and disrespect yourself; or respect yourself and disrespect others; but you can't have both.
You have expertise in the field despite never having your argument looked at by another expert? How in the world did that happen?
And you really think if they looked at your argument they’d agree? What evidence do you have to support that belief? So far the handful of experts of the forum who have looked at it have disagreed so it’s not clear why you think experts at large would agree.
And if it counts for something, all the non experts have disagreed too. That’s very statistically unlikely. Especially given that even theists, idealists and dualists on here disagree with you. So it’s not like people have some emotional motive behind disagreeing. People of every school disagree. You’d think one of them might agree by chance but nope. The only thing that brings about that effect is total nonsense.
Instead of wasting your time on supposed dunning Krugerites like us why not simply ask one of your colleagues to look at your argument? Should be a piece of cake for a renowned expert.
And you haven’t argued for your position in the op for anyone to find an interesting argument. You said: Quoting Bartricks
This reminds me of the Tanya doctrine of the three levels of morality among persons: the tzadik, the benoni, and the rasha (https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/361896/jewish/The-Benoni.htm). This draws the distinction between those who have habitually become so moral that they no longer have an evil inclination (the tzadik) versus the one who remains challenged by an evil inclination (the benoni) versus the one who purposefully does evil (the rasha). The tzadik though is not thought to really be an attainable goal for most, with only maybe one or two being in existence in any generation.
So, to the extent you reference the moral person as being habitually moral, I would agree, but just qualify that is the ideal or the aspiration and doubtfully attainable.
You then reference Hillel the Elder, who famously summarized the entire Talmud while standing on one foot: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn."
It would follow therefore from your references that the tzadik is one who has habitualized the morality as described by Hillel, and so I'm wondering if all of this is the source of the philosophy you've propounded here because you do seem to have an affinity to Jewish doctrine.
So what? For most of human history people didn't "usually think and act" like 'the Earth is round' or 'diseases are caused by germs' or 'marital rape is wrong'. Moral philosophy, while informed by human capabilities and defects, does not – logically should not – appeal to popularity tradition authority or ignorance. People can learn, culture develops, but only when viable alternatives to what they've "usually" done are persuaively proposed. Btw, Rabbi Hillel's "golden rule" is, of course, eminently pragmatic whereas, IMO, by comparison Rabbi Yeshua's has been more of a ... "stumbling block" (due to it's inherent vagueness).
Agreed. Like philosophy, in which we love – seek – wisdom, we seek goodness even though its a horizon we can never reach. After all, morals are not needed by saints just as philosophy is not need by sages.
Raised and educated in a Catholic milieu steeped in Judeo-christian biblical study, though I've been a nonbeliever since my teens, my "affinity to Jewish" thought (e.g. Hillel the Elder, (the Talmud), Maimonides, (the Zohar), Spinoza, Buber, Levinas, S. Weil, A. Heschel, E. Wiesel, et al) is bone-deep and dialectical.
The "Golden Rule(s)" seem tied only to inner experience of actions. We technocrats know better, your actions need quantifiable results!
Yep. More than once. But I don't hold grudges.
Quoting Bartricks
Then I'll ask again. Are metaethicists not professional philosophers? Or do you have some definition of idiocy that does not exclude being an expert reasoner?
Thought so. And you sound like grudge central to me.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, some professional philosophers are metaethicists. And if this discussion was among professional philosophers it would not be at all like it is. There can be degrees of stupidity, you see. And stupidity can manifest itself in different ways.
I imagine you haven't read much contemporary metaethics, if any? If you understood my case and then read the literature, you'd recognise just how stupid most contemporary metaethicists are, despite their works being very sophisticated exercises in reasoning.
It takes great skill to defend a stupid view. And that's what the vast bulk of contemporary metaethicists do. They defend stupid views very cleverly. There are roughly three stupid alternatives to divine command theory: expressivism, naturalism and non-naturalism. They're incredibly stupid views. But they're approximately equally stupid. And most contemporary philosophers won't touch divine command theory with a barge pole, because they were told as undergrads that it is false because of 'Euthyphro' and so never think to revisit it. That, combined with the fact that most are hacks who are not really interested in what's true, but interested in showcasing their cleverness - which is precisely what the contemporary debate, dominated as it is by discussion of idiotic views - allows them to do.
See?
Thanks, I'll mention it to my therapist.
Quoting Bartricks
So if it is possible for professional philosophers to defend stupid views cleverly you've still not given any ground for accepting their assessment of that which is self-evident to reason. It could be a stupid view defended cleverly.