Relativism, Anti-foundationalism and Morality
Firstly, apologies, I am not a philosopher, nor have I attempted to develop a consistent system of thought. This matter may seem clear to others, but it isn't to me.
Is there a meaningful difference between relativism and anti-foundationalism, or is the latter simply a sophisticated version which ultimately fails to avoid the former's traps?
As I understand it, relativism and anti-foundationalism both question the idea that there are universal truths or moral facts, but they do it in different ways.
Relativism says that what’s true or right depends on culture, history, or personal perspective and there are no absolute standards. This means that different people or societies can have different ideas of what is right or good and none of them is objectively better than the others.
Anti-foundationalism, on the other hand, says we don’t need a fixed, ultimate foundation for knowledge or morality. Instead, we can build our beliefs on practical, changing frameworks without relying on eternal principles. This approach accepts that our understanding and rules can evolve over time and that we can make sense of the world without claiming to have permanent or universal truths. It focuses on what works, what is coherent, and what helps us navigate life rather than searching for unchanging foundations.
What I am interested in here is whether it is possible to make moral claims from either position. I can certainly see how simple relativism makes it a performative contradiction. Hence the relativist fallacy.
Anti-foundationalists, by contrast, hold that we can still justify our views through shared practices, shared goals and reasoning, even if there’s no single universal truth to ground them.
For instance, morality could be seen as something that grows out of human agreements, pragmatic necessities and dialogue rather than absolute rules. In a democracy, ideas like fairness or equality aren’t based on metaphysical truths, they come from ongoing discussion and collective experience and seem to be dynamic and evolving as the conversation changes.
@Leontiskos (one of our more rigorous and philosophically sophisticated members and, perhaps, a classicist) seems to argue that anti-foundationalism is a variation of relativism and doesn’t offer us a place to stand, so from this viewpoint it is impossible to provide any moral justifications with any authority. We cannot say slavery is wrong if we subscribe to an anti-foundationalist perspective.
Leon has also made the point (correctly I think) that many contemporary progressives make significant moral claims without ever providing coherent arguments to justify them.
I’m interested in how members view the role of foundational knowledge or principles in the justification of moral claims.
Is there a meaningful difference between relativism and anti-foundationalism, or is the latter simply a sophisticated version which ultimately fails to avoid the former's traps?
As I understand it, relativism and anti-foundationalism both question the idea that there are universal truths or moral facts, but they do it in different ways.
Relativism says that what’s true or right depends on culture, history, or personal perspective and there are no absolute standards. This means that different people or societies can have different ideas of what is right or good and none of them is objectively better than the others.
Anti-foundationalism, on the other hand, says we don’t need a fixed, ultimate foundation for knowledge or morality. Instead, we can build our beliefs on practical, changing frameworks without relying on eternal principles. This approach accepts that our understanding and rules can evolve over time and that we can make sense of the world without claiming to have permanent or universal truths. It focuses on what works, what is coherent, and what helps us navigate life rather than searching for unchanging foundations.
What I am interested in here is whether it is possible to make moral claims from either position. I can certainly see how simple relativism makes it a performative contradiction. Hence the relativist fallacy.
Anti-foundationalists, by contrast, hold that we can still justify our views through shared practices, shared goals and reasoning, even if there’s no single universal truth to ground them.
For instance, morality could be seen as something that grows out of human agreements, pragmatic necessities and dialogue rather than absolute rules. In a democracy, ideas like fairness or equality aren’t based on metaphysical truths, they come from ongoing discussion and collective experience and seem to be dynamic and evolving as the conversation changes.
@Leontiskos (one of our more rigorous and philosophically sophisticated members and, perhaps, a classicist) seems to argue that anti-foundationalism is a variation of relativism and doesn’t offer us a place to stand, so from this viewpoint it is impossible to provide any moral justifications with any authority. We cannot say slavery is wrong if we subscribe to an anti-foundationalist perspective.
Leon has also made the point (correctly I think) that many contemporary progressives make significant moral claims without ever providing coherent arguments to justify them.
I’m interested in how members view the role of foundational knowledge or principles in the justification of moral claims.
Comments (145)
Quoting Tom Storm
One difference is that almost all major philosophers who are accused of moral or epistemic relativism explicitly reject the label. What they reject is the following formulation:
truth or moral validity is relative to a framework, such as a culture, language, historical epoch, or conceptual scheme, and there is no non-relative standpoint from which competing frameworks can be judged. Many critics of relativism understand this as entailing either equal validity of all moral claims or an inability to criticize other moral systems. It is this package that thinkers like Rorty, Heidegger, and Derrida reject.
For instance, Rorty abandons the idea of objective, ahistorical foundations for morality and knowledge, which is why he is constantly labeled a relativist. But he insists that his view is not relativist but ethnocentric: we always reason from within our own inherited practices, vocabularies, and moral sentiments. For Rorty, the key point is not that “anything goes,” but that justification is always to someone, to a community with shared norms, without implying that all communities are equally good or beyond criticism.
Heidegger rejects relativism because he doesn’t think the disclosure of Being is a matter of subjective or cultural “points of view.” Historical “worlds” are not interchangeable frameworks chosen by agents; they are ontological conditions that shape what can count as intelligible at all. The difference between epochs is not a difference between equally valid beliefs, but a transformation in how being itself is revealed. From Heidegger’s perspective, calling this “relativism” already presupposes the modern subject–object scheme he is trying to overcome.
Derrida likewise rejects relativism. Deconstruction does not say that meaning or value is merely relative to perspectives, nor that interpretations are equally valid. Derrida insists instead on undecidability under conditions of responsibility. Ethical and interpretive decisions must be made without final, grounding guarantees, but this lack of foundations does not mean arbitrariness. On the contrary, responsibility becomes more demanding when one cannot appeal to absolute rules. Derrida consistently distances himself from relativism by arguing that justice, unlike law, is not relative, even though it cannot be fully present or codified.
What unites these figures is that they reject foundationalism, the idea that morality needs an ahistorical, metaphysically secure ground, while also rejecting the relativist conclusion that norms are therefore merely subjective or interchangeable. The label “relativism” is typically applied by critics who assume that if universal foundations are unavailable, then only relativism remains. But these thinkers reject that forced choice. They are trying to articulate forms of normativity that are historical, situated, and contingent without collapsing into “anything goes.”
Just as a preliminary point, I don't think I've ever said anything like that. I don't even know what "foundationalism" or "anti-foundationalism" are supposed to be. On TPF "foundationalism" is often used as a kind of vague slur. It is one of those words that is applied to one's opponents but is never adopted by anyone themselves.
Here's one way to put the argument I've made: If nothing is right or wrong, then it is not logically coherent to place blame. Or else, if moral realism is false, then there is no ground for basic moral claims. So:
Quoting Tom Storm
On this view if you see a slaveholder you could rationally engage them by saying, "If you agree that freedom is an ultimate value then it is wrong for you to hold slaves," but it would not be rational to simply say, "It is wrong for you to hold slaves." On such a view there can be hypothetical imperatives but not non-hypothetical imperatives.
Quoting Tom Storm
So then the question remains: Is it possible to make moral claims from the position of "anti-foundationalism"? That depends on what you mean by "anti-foundationalism," but in a general sense I am more interested in what you yourself believe than what so-called "anti-foundationalists" believe.
But I will try to revisit this when I have a bit more time.
Good to know and apologies if I have made some assumptions. I've tended to view myself as sympathetic to anti-foundationalism.
Quoting Leontiskos
Fair points. If you get a chance, yes please. I think your perspective on this will be useful.
For me this view just seems inherently common sensical. But I'm always somewhat fearful when something seems like common sense.
Quoting Joshs
There's a lot in this to unpack but I see where it's headed. Sounds promising.
Quoting Joshs
That's a helpful summary and pretty much what I've been attempting to describe. Appreciate your reply.
No worries. My point about hypothetical vs. non-hypothetical imperatives or ought-judgments could also be revised in relation to this:
Quoting Tom Storm
So, as above, you could rationally say, "If you share my premises then it is wrong for you to hold slaves," but it would be irrational for you to simply say, "It is wrong for you to hold slaves." If there is no reason for anyone else to share your premises, then we have the same problem I pointed out in my first post. In other words, I would want to ask why anyone should share your values in the first place. That is the key question, and your claim that you can justify the conclusion of an argument to those who agree with (or share) the premises is not at all controversial. (Incidentally, this is what Rawls eventually admitted about his work, namely that it is not capable of reaching out beyond his own cultural context).
Good. Exactly. I think this is the key issue we should explore. I'd need to think though how to answer thsi without making a mess of the reasoning. I'm not ideally placed to do this. :wink: We really need an experienced anti-foundationalist.
Best I can do is this; and I'm going the long way around. An anti-foundationalist might argue that in a society caring about solidarity ("inclusion" to use the trendy woke term) is not about metaphysical necessity, it’s about practical consequences and shared aims. Cultures that reject solidarity tend to produce fear, domination, and instability. They undermine trust and cooperation, which woudl seem essential for any functioning society. So even without universal moral facts, there are strong pragmatic reasons for solidarity: it helps communities flourish, reduces harm, and supports mutual security.
Now you can respond, “So what?” And I woudl say such a quesion is morality in action. Do we want to find ways of working together or not? Sure, we don’t have to. We could create a culture of death, pain, and suffering if we wanted. But who would really support that? Human beings are social animals who cooperate to attain goals and thrive. That's morality right there, pragmatic and unfounded on anything beyond human experince.
Seems to me that without moral facts I can still argue that slavery is wrong if I believe it is not an effective way to achieve the goal of overall flourishing. If you ask me why we should care about overall flourishing, I would say: because flourishing reflects the kinds of lives and communities we have reason to value. Lives with less suffering, more security, and greater opportunities for cooperation and mutual respect. These reasons don’t depend on eternal truths; they grow out of human experience and the practical need to live together.
I think that's the best I can do with this for now.
This is the basis of the idea that we are all equal before the law. no one would want to live in a society wherein murder, rape, theft, slavery, exploitation and so on are condoned or even advocated.
There may be no moral facts, but there are facts about people's moral attitudes. I doubt you could find anyone who advocates the above -mentioned acts. There can be honor even among thieves.
Any concept, be it relativism, anti-fundamentalism, or postpositivism, is a conceptual framework or analytical tool—a "lens" through which to describe a phenomenon, defining the boundaries of what is and isn't included within that concept. Roughly speaking, it's an idea to see the world or phenomena in a certain way, and for the sake of economy (to avoid describing the full content each time), an appropriate term—a construct—is selected. This construct is tested and accepted or rejected by intersubjective consensus.
If you approach the topic you've outlined from this perspective, the content of the idea itself, rather than its specific name, comes to the fore.
As for the content of these ideas, they have much in common—they are tools for describing the different views of contemporary people on the world order. Both terms, to varying degrees and with varying nuances, express the different understandings of contemporary people about the foundations of the world. You can create your own construct.
For me, the idea (content) itself is always more important. Perhaps philologists value a more precise demarcation of terminology.
The question of whether anti-foundationalism allows moral assertions depends on whether we believe morality requires a metaphysical foundation. If we adopt a pragmatic perspective, moral norms can be justified not through eternal truths, but through intersubjective practices, the goals of shared life, and the ability of norms to work cooperatively. Anti-foundationalism then doesn't boil down to relativism—because norms may not be "absolute," but still rational, critiqued, and improveable. In this understanding, a "position" arises not from metaphysics, but from the practice of reasoning.
An expression I've heard in relation to this apparent dilemma is the 'Cartesian anxiety' - that either knowledge has an indubitable foundation, or else certainty falls away and we're left with mere conjecture. I think that's also a consequence of Christian monotheism and the 'jealous God'. And talk of 'the absolute' or a 'philosophical absolute' invariably sounds both ponderous and covertly theistic.
Interestingly, the 'cartesian anxiety' is a theme taken up in The Embodied Mind, where it is proposed that this anxiety is a strong motivating force in current culture. But they see it as a false dilemma which needs to be overcome. Very much an 'all or nothing' kind of mindset. Their analysis is too lengthy to summarise here, but it's one of the source texts for enactivism, a key theme of which is the transcending of the subject/object, self/world division.
Nevertheless I think there's a real gap in philosophical discourse where the unconditioned should be. If everything is contingent, then the best that can be hoped for is a kind of social consensus or inter-subjective agreement. But then, if we're part of a flawed culture, there's no reason that either will provide us with a proper moral foundation. We might still be subject to Descartes' 'evil daemon', meaning that what we've gone through life thinking is real and substantial might in the end be illusory. I think that's a legitimate cause of angst.
What I had in mind was simply reasoning based on unbiased premises. Take, for example, the dialogue between Thrasymachus and Socrates about the nature of justice. Thrasymachus argues that justice consists in the "advantage of the stronger". That can be challenged on the basis that such an opinion is based on a bias in the favour of power. Of course the powerful can force a situation where their wishes carry the day and are purported to be just, but it doesn't stand up to rational scrutiny. So, there is no purely rational (i.e. unbiased) justification for equating the wishes of the powerful with justice.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is no escape from the downward spiral of such absurd thinking, except to reject it for what it is.
Quoting Wayfarer
Indeed, I was actually going to raise this but thought I had done enough damage already. :up:
Quoting Wayfarer
That resonates with me.
Quoting Wayfarer
If I were of a more scholarly cast I think this is precisely where I would go looking for a coherant model of thought in this space.
Quoting Wayfarer
Wow! The sting in the tail is the last sentence. I think this can be the problem, and perhaps ultimately why anti-foundationalism is often resisted. By "proper" I am assuming one that allows for flourishing, solidarity - you might also include higher contemplation?
Quoting Wayfarer
Hmm, I've been pondering this since I was 7 or 8.
Quoting Astorre
Yes, and that's the quesion I am posing.
Quoting Astorre
I think we are in agreement about the possibility of this lens.
But there are likely to be good arguments against it too.
Indeed. But one has to ‘see it to be it’, so to speak. No use holding forth on it otherwise.
Considering your number of forum posts, as well as the fact that you read almost every thread on this forum, I imagine you're already more than well-educated. Perhaps there's no document? But for me, a fan of content over form, that means nothing.
I would have thought you are too level-headed to take such thinking seriously, even at an early age.
Okay, great.
Quoting Tom Storm
As I said, I'm interested in talking to people, not interacting with ideologies that they may or may not hold. I would rather talk about what you and I actually believe than try to wield ill-defined labels.
Quoting Tom Storm
Again, leaving so-called "anti-foundationalism" to the side, if you want to say that a person in a society that shares the same aims can justify courses of action based on those aims, then I agree. This is why I said, "your claim that you can justify the conclusion of an argument to those who agree with (or share) the premises is not at all controversial." The question is whether people have any reason to share your aims.
Quoting Tom Storm
Sure, but you're relying on all sorts of metaphysical premises in this. For example: that humans are social animals, that human flourishing requires cooperation, and that human flourishing ought be sought. That's pretty basic Aristotelianism (as opposed to Hobbesianism), and it is filled with metaphysical presuppositions. There is no tension between experience and metaphysics. Metaphysics is known precisely through experience.
Quoting Tom Storm
Then you're committed to the value of human flourishing and you think everyone should recognize your value whether or not they do. In that case you would seem to be a moral realist, someone who sees human flourishing as an intrinsic telos of human beings.
And perhaps more pointed is the fact that such cultures have certainly existed. If morality is just intersubjective agreement then you have a form of "might makes right" where instead of "might" you have "the will of the majority" (i.e. pure democratic totalitarianism), in which case the various evil cultures throughout history cannot have actually been evil at all.
Fair. Yes, I think it’s probably quite difficult not to hold any metaphysical presuppositions. And no doubt we all inherit philosophical models and values from our culture; though not always good ones.
Quoting Leontiskos
On this, I’d say we can organise human life in almost inexhaustible ways. My own preference (and the one I think makes most sense and should be promoted) is to promote harmony and wellbeing for as many people as possible. But I settle on this because it seems the most reasonable way to achieve a goal. I don’t consider it to be a fact independent of human contingencies. Do you think this is an important distinction or does this count as moral realism?
In this thread, Vachagotta poses a series of questions which could be considered 'foundational', relating to the fundamental nature of reality. Is the universe eternal, or is it not? (Each question is posed separately.) Are the soul and body the same or are they not? Does the Buddha cease to exist at death or does he not? Each question is answered in the negative. Exasperated, Vaccha asks, why does the Buddha dissociate himself from all these views?
"Because', answers the Buddha, 'the position that "the cosmos is eternal" is a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. It is accompanied by suffering, distress, despair, and fever, and it does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation; to calm, direct knowledge, full Awakening, Unbinding.' (Translation: Thanissaro Bhikkhu)
So, asks Vachagotta '"Does Master Gotama have any position at all?"
"A 'position,' Vaccha, is something that a Tathagata has done away with. What a Tathagata sees is this: 'Such is form, such its origination, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origination, such its disappearance; such is perception...such are fabrications...such is consciousness, such its origination, such its disappearance.' Because of this, I say, a Tathagata — with the ending, fading away, cessation, renunciation, and relinquishment of all construings, all excogitations, all I-making and mine-making and obsessions with conceit — is, through lack of clinging/sustenance, released."
The dialogue then goes on to say that after his death the monk who's mind is thus released neither appears (i.e. is reborn) nor ceases to appear, nor both appears and doesn’t, neither appears nor doesn’t.
That all this is difficult to understand is also acknowledged in the text:
‘At this point, Master Gotama, I am befuddled; at this point, confused. The modicum of clarity coming to me from your earlier conversation is now obscured.”
“Of course you’re befuddled, Vaccha. Of course you’re confused. Deep, Vaccha, is this dhamma, hard to see, hard to realise, tranquil, refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to be experienced by the wise. For those with other views, other practices, other satisfactions, other aims, other teachers, it is difficult to know.”
This leads up to the parable of a fire - when it goes out, where does it ‘go’? North, east, west, south? Why, nowhere, of course, there is nothing to ‘go’. Once the fuel is exhausted, the fire is no more.
Aggi-Vachagotta sutta https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN72.html
I’m not posting this to evangelise Buddhism (although undoubtedly it will interpreted that way by some), but to point out the distinctively Buddhist attitude towards questions that are elsewhere considered foundational to morality and philosophy. Why? Because nearly always these begin with the desire for certainty, ‘man’s desire to know’ (the very first line in The Metaphysics!)
European culture has for centuries ricocheted between the horns of the dilemma: God or atheism, mind or matter, idealism or materialism, science or religion. But maybe there is no resolution possible on the level at which the dilemma is posed. The Buddhist remedy is presented as the insight into the binding process that culminates in suffering/existence (‘ Such is form, such its origination, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origination, such its disappearance;… These expressions are all, of course, formulaic, as they are chanted rather than read; all Buddhist suttas were transmitted orally for centuries before being committed to writing.)
But the philosophical point is the necessity of direct insight into the causal factors that drive existence; not beliefs, not propositions, but insight (Jñ?na). And that is a practice, a skill, a way-of-being, not the assertion of belief or of a philosophical absolute. But neither is it relativism, because the premise against which relativism reacted in the first place, has not been posited.
At around 7 or 8 I came to the view that culture (and by extension, reality) could be constructed in many different ways, that there was potentially a world beyond our sense experience, and that human reality was ultimately perspectival. By this I also meant our worldviews and values, which I thought people inherited from culture and which, in many cases, were a sham. By “illusory” I didn’t mean a Matrix-style reality (though that did seem a possibility to me in the early 1970s). I still believe that human beings live in a world of values shaped by culture, linguistic practices, and our biology, something along the lines of phenomenology. But I simply don’t have the time or disposition to make a serious enquiry into it.
I appreciate the story. I think you’ve touched on something I agree with, and that is the alarming tendency toward dualistic thinking in the West. Father Richard Rohr, who I have a modest familiarity with, appeals to me in this space, even if he is considered a heretic by some. I’m also attracted to the notion that no final resolution is possible at the level the dilemma is posed. I tend to think that, for me and my path, a search for ultimate answers isn’t really useful. I should just get on with things and try not to cause harm.
What else do you know about Buddhist origins of morality (recognising that there are different schools)? Given your account here, do you think the debate about moral facts is something Buddhist teaching would generally bypass? The Western tradition seems to be a continual search for foundational justification.
Do you think the culture, the shaping it does and the values it produces are real in the sense of being actually operative? Are linguistic practices themselves real happenings? What about biology? Is it all a matter of cultural construction too? Do you believe there is an actual world which contributes anything to our sense experience and contributes to shaping culture?
The usual kids’ books, with the most influential being Huckleberry Finn, as it happens. That gave me a healthy skepticism of civilisation and adult behaviour. But much of it came from going to a Baptist school and having a best friend whose father was a Baptist minister. I was never able to believe in God or in many of the positions adults seemed to hold dear. We had modest debates about God and values, and this promoted a series of views in me that have been swirling around ever since. Bear in mind that the Baptist community I knew was not like the American version; ours was liberal and saw the Bible as a series of allegories for learning, not true stories. I think this also had an impact. But who knows?
I have no firm commitments and no expertise, but I guess at a basic level I would say we are the products of inherited concepts and values, and we are shaped by our particular form, meaning our biology, or mode of being. This means reality generally appears to us in a particular way. I use these words without committing to materialism or scientistic models of reality. They are terms we cannot really avoid in conversations like this. I think what we call the “actual world” is fraught. If you mean the world of gravity, water, and buses that can run over people, then I have no problem accepting that. If you mean politics and religion then these are somewhat arbitrary social constructions. I am also open to idealism, but I don't see how this is a particularly useful view.
Mum sent me to Sunday School when I was about 7, because she thought I should be exposed to religion so I could make up my own mind about it. Apparently I asked so many troublesome questions they asked her not to send me back.
Anyway you didn't answer my other questions. Of course you are under no obligation to do so.
One other question I would like to ask is whether you believe there are cross-cultural moral commonalities.
Edit: I see you have answered the questions in question as I was writing.
Just did. No issues, I just don't have any interesting answers
Of course not. Morality (sila) was all of a piece with the rest of the path - the 'three legs of the tripod' are morality (sila), wisdom (panna) and meditation (samadhi). Early Buddhism was in modern terms ascetic, even if Buddhism rejects the extreme ascetic practices of other sects. It was in our terms extremely moralistic, the monastic code had hundreds of rules, some of which, if they were breached, would result in expulsion. The philosophical point, though, is the 'avoidance of the extremes' - of nihilism, on the one side (under which materialism falls), and 'eternalism' on the other (under which a lot of religion falls).
As for Westen culture, I'm of the view that there it is a still-unfolding dialectic between theism and atheism, materialism and idealism. The emerging synthesis will not be a melange of both extremes but something completely new. I read a fascinating paper by one Soren Brier, that Apokrisis sent me. It mentions the Hegelian 'Aufhebung' — a sublation that simultaneously negates and preserves both poles at a higher level. I can't find it again now. But a lot of the ideas coming out of 'consciousness studies' and east-west dialogue integrate these perspectives. As I mentioned, the landmark book The Embodied Mind incorporates many insights from Buddhist philosophy (Francisco Varela having been a Buddhist convert).
There seem to be cross-cultural commonalities in most areas, from morality to spirituality.
I’ve generally held that morality seems to be pragmatic code of conduct that supports a social tribal species like humans to get along, hence almost universal prohibitions on lying, killing, murder, and other harms, along with a concurrent veneration of charity and altruism. Hierarchies also seem baked into this.
Quoting Tom Storm
That is what I meant. I believe that people of all cultures experience the world of sky and earth, plants and animal, gravity, water, food, sex, illness, physical decline and death and countless other things. I don't believe those realities are culturally or mentally constructed, although culture will mediate how we think about them, of course.
Quoting Tom Storm
I agree with you about the pragmatic basis of ethics and morality. We don't need a lawgiver. That said many people seem to lack a moral compass, but I don't think religion has helped with that at all. I mean, look at child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and other religion-affiliated institutions. Of course I'm not saying religion is a cause, but the religious idea that sex is somehow dirty or sinful may well contribute to perversions.
I agree with about hierarchies being inherent in human social life (as it is with animals too). Hierarchy is basically a source of, and probably outcome of bias. We have the possibility of approaching morality and ethics rationally (ideally without bias).
That certainly sounds like the opposite of what I would preference. :wink:
Quoting Wayfarer
I think that's fair and some of the directions you have pointed to appeal to me also.
Interesting. My mum was a searcher and was especially interested in Jung, mysticism, and Gnosticism. She was friends with a close colleague of Carl Jung’s, so conversations often turned to what gnosis meant. I forget the answer. Like yours my mum always said there must be more to life than "this". But curiously, when she was dying, she ended up in a palliative care and when asked if she wanted to see the spiritual care worker, she responded, “No, that’s all bullshit.” At the point of death, she had no faith or interest in the spiritual realm, a break from her whole life. Having worked in palliative care, I have seen many religious folk, including nuns and priests lose their faith as death approaches, generally without distress. I’m not sure what this signifies, but it is the opposite of what people often think.
I know. I'm gloomily aware that had I been a Buddhist monk I would have been chucked out decades ago (although I still maintain a Buddhist faith.)
I found the Soren Brier paper: Peircean cosmogony's symbolic agapistic self-organization as an example of the in?uence of eastern philosophy on western thinking (quite a mouthful).
[quote=Abstract (Excerpt)]Charles S. Peirce developed a process philosophy featuring a non-theistic agapistic evolution from nothingness. It is an Eastern inspired alternative to the Western mechanical ontology of classical science also inspired by the American transcendentalists. Advaitism and Buddhism are the two most important Eastern philosophical traditions that encompass scienti?c knowledge and the idea of spontaneous evolutionary development. This article attempts to show how Peirce's non-mechanistic triadic semiotic process theory is suited better to embrace the quantum ?eld view than mechanistic and information based views are with regard to a theory of the emergence of consciousness.[/quote]
I'm pointing it out because the synthesis of 'Eastern' (principally Vedanta and Buddhism) and systems science/biosemiotics/biology is emerging as an alernative to both 'atheistic' materialism and 'theistic' creationism (in Buddhist terms, nihilism and eternalism.) The hegelian idea he mentions:
Quoting Søren Brier
Wow! As you say a fantastic title (in the Victorian sense of the word).
If I had my time again, I would read Peirce (very complicated).
Do you hold a particular view about the foundations of moral positions? I am assuming you might locate morality alongside our sense of the sacred? If so, say some more.
Quoting Tom Storm
As I said above, you have to 'be it to see it'. (I'm not being holier-than-thou, I'm far from being holy). But the understanding has soaked in that it's necessary to develop insight into one's own psychodynamic processes - which encompass your circumstances, culture, proclivities, the totality of your being (psuche or soul). A lot of the conflict about morality and belief is obviously grounded in attachment to symbolic meanings and slogans, 'the writhings and thickets of views'. A philosophical mind has to see through that.
So are you saying that morality is best understood beyond preconceptions, homilies and slogans, by looking inward through self-reflection?
To be honest morality seems less important there than metaphysics and experience.
I agree.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think it counts as moral realism, at least as long as the goal of harmony and well-being for the greatest number is held as normative. The difficulty comes with your third sentence here, "I settle on this because it seems the most reasonable way to achieve a goal." It is a difficulty because what you have done is defined a goal, not a means, and therefore it is not really about "the most reasonable way to achieve a goal." You are saying that the goal is "to promote harmony and wellbeing for as many people as possible," and as we have been saying, we must understand whether this goal is hypothetical or non-hypothetical.
So let me try to spell it out again. If we have a goal (end) then some things will be appropriate unto that end and some things will be inappropriate unto that end. Thus following my formula from above, you could rationally say, "If you share this goal then it is wrong for you to do X," but it would be irrational for you to simply say, "It is wrong for you to do X [regardless of any ends]."
So on the means/ends (or means/goals) understanding of morality, how would one secure the possibility of culpability? How would one be justified in saying, "You are wrong to [hold slaves, say]"? Rather than blathering on, I will let you try to answer this question, but it would apparently have something to do with common ends/goals, no?
Quoting Tom Storm
Incidentally and as an aside, you are apparently arguing against Kantian morality with claims like this (cf. Simpson, Goodness and Nature, p. 128...). Kant effectively thought that morality could not be based on human contingencies, such as the Aristotelian notion of flourishing, because in his mind human contingencies are always bound up with selfishness. But I am in no way a Kantian. I am an Aristotelian who bases morality in human flourishing. I have argued against Kant's strange morality many times on TPF.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, I think you're correct on this.
If we think that the best goal for a society is to promote flourishing then there are better or worse ways to achieve this end. I think this is fair.
Is your sense of what counts as flourishing pure Aristotle or is it also built around some Christian commitment? I made the assumption, perhaps wrongly, that you were aligned with Thomism.
I would argue that most Western ethics (secular and identity politics) seem to be derived from Christian values (and I guess classical Greek), though I know some people might consider this anathema. But how could it not be the case after a couple of millennia?
A cultural relativist can assume culture as the foundation of morality (though it would obviously not be an "unchanging" foundation, as cutlures change), and that would through a spanner in the works here, but a relativist doesn't need to assume culture as the foundation of morality.
So:
Quoting Tom Storm
Mostly yes. I'm a bit unsure about "depends". Your moral decisions, for example, are part of the process of cutlure. They depend on what's gone before, so in that sense, the term's okay. But what you decide is going to ever so slightly influence what future moral decisions will depend upon. As such it's an iterative process.
Yes, nothing much to add.
And this is where I start to differ. It's not that relativists don't say such things; I've heard them often enough. I just think it shoots past the problem. What I think a relativist should say instead is this:
"...and there is no non-situated position from which to judge one better than the others."
There are plenty situated positions, though, from which to make a judgement, and everyone who makes a judgement has a postion. What a relativist can't assume is that there is a shared postition from which an argument can be fruitfully held.
But such a position could be created, and maybe even survive beyond the specific positioned moral conflict. Because moral positions aren't fixed, this is possible. But it requires relativising your own position. And this in turn puts more responsibility on the individual for holding any position.
So when I look through your paragraph on anti-foundationalsim I notice the following:
"practical, changing frameworks": Like, say, culture?
So in the end criticism of relativism tends to come down to things like this:
Slavery comes up because it was once practised within the arguing culture, and now no longer is. Slavery is brought up by the critic, because they know the relativist to be very likely to consider slavery wrong. And they think that's a gotcha, but by thinking that they demonstrate cultural relativism. The envisioned success of the rhetoric depends on the expected shared values. No?
Moral discourse is predictable to some degree. That is why you can always find some kind of "obviously wrong" thing to throw in the face of a relativist - to shut them up. These are the "attractors" that structure the discourse. It's, for example, why the criticism of capitalism comes up with terms like "wage slavery".
The ground-level conflict tends not to concern such core terms: it's not about "Slavery is (not) wrong", it's about "this is/isn't a kind of slavery". We see this more clearly in slogans like "piracy is theft" (about violation of intellectual property and copyright).
Moral decisions are hard, and we welcome whatever makes them easier. Moral rules are part of that. But since anyone can come up with them, we need legitimisations: authrority, rational arguments, whatever appeals to you. Uncertainty tolerance varies from person to person. Maybe your God tells you what's right, or maybe you think you're smart enough to figure it out for yourself. A culture, though, has people of all sorts. My personal brand of relativism skewers all the levels: moral conflict between groups, with groups, within a dithering person. Ultimately, culture always falls short. It never really tells you what to do with full reliability. You end up making your decisions, one way or another. But what culture does do is structure what you pay attention to, what you can expect from others around you, where you can talk with confidence, where you have to tread carefully. If the out-group calls you a hypocrite, that's fine; if the in-group calls you a hypocrite, that's a problem; if the reference-group calls you a hypocrite that's sad.
So a relativist can definitely hold moral positions. It's just not about whether the position is right or wrong. It's about who you expect to agree and who you expect to disagree, and how important the position is when measured against the trouble you're likely to run into. Whatever you decide is going to be influenced by culture, but it's also going to influence culture. You're part of the ongoing process of righting and wronging of human activity.
In short: laws don't determine what's right or wrong; they determine what sanctions you can expect. That certainly makes decisions easier.
Quoting Tom Storm
For his relation to moral philosophy, care needs be taken for which pure reason matters.
Quoting Tom Storm
…entirely a priori, but not necessarily understanding.
Quoting Tom Storm
Experience is irrelevant, for to be entirely a priori simply means “not independently of this or that experience, but absolutely independently of all experience…” (B3). The role of affect holds, but not as the senses are affected because of real objects, but the internal affect on a moral subject’s condition because of himself.
Quoting Tom Storm
“Sound” indicates a logical condition. Moral philosophy doesn’t incorporate logic in the same way as transcendental philosophy, these being distinct and altogether of far different origin and manifestation. It may be more appropriate to consider the form of rationalism for the latter as sound, but with respect to the former, it is properly considered “lawful”.
Quoting Tom Storm
Agreed, and for me, the something that seems like common sense is in fact the intermingling of anthropology, ethics, or cultural normativity, with moral philosophy proper. The rather vast difference between the plurality of human engagements, and singularity of the human condition which determines the variety of responses to them, mistakes the effect for the cause.
Quoting Tom Storm
For that which belongs to a human for the simple reason it is irrevocably a necessary condition, any explanation for it must be a form of idealism, iff idealism is that by which the internal machinations of humans in general, whatever they may be, is susceptible to exposition in a rational doctrine. Still, a rational doctrine of what it is to be moral, which is always metaphysical, is not always reflected in its exhibitions, insofar as the mere behavior of the subject not always accords with his own metaphysical doctrine.
Quoting Tom Storm
If morality is a necessary human condition, there’s no need to look for it. All the moral subject does with his philosophy, which just is the looking in some form or another, is come to grips with himself when he’s failed.
Anyway…..interesting topic, even if I got no interest in relativism or anti-foundationalism. I like to keep my -isms irreducible.
For Kant, the matter is not a derivation from Christian values but a focus on the concerns of the individual reflecting upon their condition as individuals. The source of the recognition of duty as imperative is said to come from reason itself but the expectation for an individual is a problem of hope and belief. Consider this account of the difference between Kant and Spinoza:
Quoting Kant, Critique of Judgement, page 451
One big difference between this and Aristotle is the focus on the inhospitality of nature concerning the life of a person. Is that Camus in the background, firing up a Gauloises?
“…. One must imagine Sisyphus happy….”
Do you believe there’s such a thing as pure reason? I’m not really a science guy but don’t many cognitive scientists view reason as contingent upon how human brains work? Human habits rather than universal necessities. Big and intractable subject.
Quoting Mww
That's a tantalising comment. I'll need to think over it for a bit before I know if I agree.
Quoting Mww
I'm not sure I understand this sentence.
I can’t follow or even get through that Kant passage, it’s too dense and complex. Something about duty and God and atheism? I’ve never understood deontology. I think Kant would consider me morally rotten.
I love it. You’re absolutely right. From the vantage of the OP Kant is the enemy.
Okay great. I see I've opened up a can of worms with Kant, but maybe that's okay if he is really playing the role that I think he is.
Quoting Tom Storm
Quickly, I am a Christian but not technically a Thomist, although I do have a lot of respect for Thomism. My personal understanding of flourishing is influenced by Christianity, but in discussions such as these I restrict myself to arguments and concepts that are readily available to the non-Christian (and therefore the "flourishing" that I have been referring to here is not based in revealed doctrines of religion).
Quoting Tom Storm
Good, I agree. Still, I think my points about moral realism and relativism can be made independent of Christian (revealed) premises.
Quoting Tom Storm
Okay, so what is required if we are to be able to say something like, "Slavery is wrong (for everyone)"? Given the means/ends notion of morality that we have been considering, apparently it must be the case that everyone has the same end which slavery does violence to.
First I should make a terminological point. The word "goal" presupposes intention or volition. The word "end" does not, although it does not exclude intention and volition. So every goal is an end but not every end is a goal. Hopefully the import of this will become more obvious as we proceed.
So let's take two utterances, and let's suppose that they are being made to a random slave holder:
Let's also suppose, for the sake of argument, that the end/goal which makes slavery wrong is the equality of all humans.
Taking (2) first, it conceives of wrongness as being predicated on our interlocutor consenting to the goal of the equality of all humans. If he consents to the goal of the equality of all humans, then his act is wrong. If he does not consent to that goal, then his act is not wrong. This means that if our encounter is truly random, then we are only justified in telling the random slave-holder that he is wrong to hold slaves if we know that he holds to the goal of human equality; and (because the encounter is random), this can only be true if we know that everyone holds to the goal of human equality.
Now moving to (1), given the idea of "whether you think so or not," we must move from talking about goals to talking explicitly about ends, because in this case the endpoint of human equality need not be consciously/intentionally/volitionally recognized by the slave-holder. In this case instead of saying something like, "You should abstain from lying if you think telling the truth is an ultimate goal," we are saying something like, "You should feed your infant because you are a human being."
To summarize, if we want to say that slavery is universally wrong, then if we are utilizing a consent-based morality we must know that everyone holds the same goal (of human equality), and if we are utilizing a "natural telos"-based morality, then we will be able to say that slavery is universally wrong regardless of whether everyone holds the same goal (in a conscious, intentional, volitional way).
Because this post is getting long and potentially confusing, I will leave it there for now. The question obviously arises, "How do we ground moral truths that are not based in consent?," but I will leave that for later. First let's just ask if any of this makes sense as a groundwork.
I see your point that for morality to have any universal clout, it would useful to be able to point to a natural telos, since this grounds moral claims in what something is rather than in what people merely happen to agree to. If, as you say, a person does not accept that all people deserve freedom and equal status, then it's not really possible to use that as a justification for why slavery is wrong. Such is the limitation of consensus made principles.
Now by inclination and temperament, I am unlikely to accept that everything has a built in purpose or end towards which it naturally develops. I am not sure I have any sophisticated reasoning for this at my fingertips but I will consider this over the next few days. And we may come to an impasse over this one. Nevertheless I would accept your argument that telos might be a critical concept for a universal ethics.
Just out of interest, do you think there’s a risk of an is–ought fallacy if we accept telos? Isn’t there still a problem in deriving an ought from a natural fact, or would you say that the notion of “inherent purpose” overrides this because it’s built into the concept itself? It's definitional or analytic.
Great post. For the sake of convenience let's call the position which says that humans have at least one universal and natural telos "teleological naturalism." Now I do think the teleological naturalist must deal with arguments from moral non-naturalists (such as the is/ought distinction, which originally flows from Kant), but let's delay that discussion for just a moment.
Quoting Tom Storm
I want to dwell for a moment on this question of whether there is any alternative to teleological naturalism for the person who holds to at least some universal moral truths. The primary alternative on offer is Kant. Beyond that, someone might say that consequentialism is an alternative, but I'm not really convinced that consequentialism departs from teleological naturalism construed broadly. For example, the hedonist seems to hold that humans are intrinsically ordered to pleasure, and therefore I would see hedonism as falling into this same category of teleological naturalism (construed broadly).
The alternative I've already outlined is one which is consent-based but thinks that it will be able to achieve universal consent. Kant is one example of this, although "consent" is not quite accurate in his case, as he is more autonomy-based.
Anyway, what do you think? Do you think there are viable alternatives to teleological naturalism for those who hold to at least some universal moral truths? A fairly easy example of teleological naturalism is the hedonist who says, "Humans are pleasure-loving creatures by nature, therefore we do seek pleasure," and this is seen as a ground for a pleasure-based ethic.
I don’t think I have any firm commitments here but I do lean a bit towards consequentialism. I'm not a big fan of the notion of human nature. I’ve always assumed that morality is either grounded in God (more along the lines of classical theology): something is good because it reflects or participates in God’s being of perfect goodness. Or we make it up as we go and retrofit reasoning to justify it. I’ve tended to be in the latter camp, but I respect well developed ideas even if I don't share them. I also recognise that my intermittent glibness can get me into trouble.
But more importantly, perhaps, I have never had to struggle with ethical choices in life. I just know what I am going to do in almost any situation. I never want to be cruel or cause suffering. I assume I inherit this from culture and upbringing and understand that not everyone shares such a perspective or sees cruelty or suffering in the same way. I also don't claim to be "good" whatever that may be.
I have read and heard of deontology as the contrary to consequentialism. In those terms, I suppose Kant is more of the former than the latter. He definitely does not subscribe to an ethics of outcomes. On the other hand, Kant does see how an increase of human freedom would make a less terrible world.
But by that measure, Aristotle also holds that virtues are a natural telos for a human. Whatever the design of nature makes that the case does not change the context of an individual "doing those things for their own sake."
I brought in the Critique of Judgment quote to emphasize how the years of "Christian" discourse has put a focus on the "person" not expressed the same way in Aristotle.
Do you believe that "materialism" entails "nihilism" or vice verse? If not, why group them together?
Quoting Leontiskos
:up: :up:
Quoting Tom Storm
As a moral naturalist: insofar as needless harm – whatever causes every individual human to gratuitously suffer (as well as other kinds of fauna & flora) – is "foundational" such that we cannot not know this about ourselves (or living beings), "moral claims" – non-instrumental / non-transactional norms, conduct or relationships – are "justified" to the extent they assert imperatives which when executed reliably reduce harms more than cause or exacerbate harms.
Quoting Tom Storm
Spinoza's conatus. Fwiw, my 'conatic' interpretation: it is performatively self-contradictory for an unimpaired agent not to strive to grow, flourish, optimize agency (i.e. pragmatic capabilities, or adaptive habits, for ... optimizing (i.e. countering suboptimal) agency); and, in particular, moral agency is optimized by reflectively forming habits of harm-reduction (& injustice-resistance) aka "virtues".
Ehhhhh…..I’m sure there’s an abundance of abstraction, from the physical mechanisms of the brain to those conditions which facilitate an explanation for something every human ever, is only seeming to do. If it were ever to occur to me the goings-on between my ears wasn’t a general range of mental constructs, I wouldn’t be able to say a damn thing about what is going on.
I mean….even if I had a completely determined physical explanation for my abject hatred for the taste of Lima beans, isn’t it still me that hates that taste? What kind of explanation is really worth entertaining, that says neural pathways, or ion potentials, hate Lima beans?
So, yes, there is that which is called pure reason, even if only within a speculative non-physical explanation for physical conditions. And the kind of pure reason it is, depends on the domain of the philosophy that uses it. For experience it is pure theoretical reason; for which experience is impossible it is pure speculative reason; for moral philosophy having to do with the will it is pure practical reason.
The critical human is going to explain things to himself, whether or not there’s sufficient proofs for what he claims. It’s just what he does.
————-
Quoting Tom Storm
It’s the simple representation of how a subject feels about that stuff of which he is the sole determinant factor. Which is the irreducible condition of Kantian moral philosophy: the proper moral agent will do what he’s already determined must be done, whether he feels good about doing it or not. That’s the subject’s condition because of himself: he feels like shit for what he did at the same time it’s he alone, that determined what was to be done. Or he feels great, depends…..
Notice that was given in the context of Buddhist ethics. There, materialism is designated nihilistic because it denies the efficacy of karma. But I feel that nihilism is widespread in today’s culture. It doesn’t necessarily presents as a dramatic, “sturm und drang” view of life but can manifest as ennui or anomie.
:up:
Quoting Tom Storm
As an aside, @180 Proof's approach is especially helpful insofar as he is a moral naturalist (and moral realist) who is not religiously motivated, and he holds a principled view. This helps show that there are principled approaches to morality that are not religious in nature. I will come back to the rest of your post.
The first thing I would want to say here is that "retrofit reasoning" must itself be either teleological, deontological, consequentialist, realist, non-realist, et al. Given that all of the same questions remain, this doesn't really answer any of them. Even the religious approach that you reference could be a form of "retrofit reasoning" (although I understand why you separate it out).
Quoting Tom Storm
Then let's take a test case. You want to never be cruel, but you understand not everyone shares this perspective and sees cruelty in the same way. Suppose you see someone acting in a cruel way. Would you try to get them to stop, or not? For me, this is the question where the rubber hits the road. If someone tries to get other people to stop acting cruelly, then I would say that they believe in a moral norm that applies to everyone and not just themselves, even if they say that they "understand that not everyone shares my perspective." Either you will not intervene when you witness cruelty, or you will intervene. Either you allow others to pursue their goals which require cruelty, or else you take steps to bring about your own moral goal of non-cruelty, even where others do not share your perspective. I don't see any middle ground which would allow you to do both, or which would allow you to avoid the question posed.
Quoting Dawnstorm
I like what you say here. What do you think about relativism with respect to science? There is a kind of morality associated with it, not just in the sense that the proper application of science can be debated, but that the notion of scientific truth rests on valuative criteria. Some argue in the same breath that morals are culturally contingent and relative but that scientific objectivity is not. They can thus claim that some of Hitler’s views can at the same time be judged as morally relative but empirically incorrect.
They might try to stop people acting cruelly because they feel the victim's pain and see the propensity for cruelty as a mental illness (not being able to empathize, feel another's pain).
I like it. Nice way of putting it. Quoting Mww
Thanks for clarifying.
Quoting 180 Proof
Not sure I fully understand this - are you saying that we all have an inbuilt awareness that needless harm and suffering are bad, and this functions as a basic starting point for morality? And that moral claims are justified when they express obligations that flow from that fact and when they guide us toward reducing needless harm?
I guess I’ve done so. I’ve taken animals from people who were cruel to them. I’ve thrown men out of bars for harassing women. I’ve broken up unfair fights. I’ve stopped police from hurting people a couple of times; a bit more risky. I've stopped men beating women. I've stopped bullies. Would I intervene if it were a bikie gang picking on a lone person? I’m not sure about that, but I would call the police.
I would say, however, that my interventions have been impulsive and were essentially responses to my emotional reaction to what I experienced. I wouldn’t expect everyone to do the same.
Yes, that's the gist.
.
This is a complex topic, and I'm not sure I can give a comprehensive answer here. I've got a degree in sociology, so that's my bias here.
I think there are facts, but also that facts need to be represented somehow so that they become relevant, and that relevance always occurs within a worldview. For example, I think that there are facts about sex, and that a biologist can research them, but the theoretical categories depend on the questions we ask. The result is that to the degree that biological research is a social activity, sexual facts are pre-gendered.
I feel "objectivity" is a distraction technique: for example, different people have different heat tolerance, so whether or not it's too hot in here is a matter of individual judgment. But we can distract ourselves with a thermometer, and we can then structure social conflict around the numbers provided by the device; i.e. you already have a built-in expectation of what counts as cold/warm/hot and you have habituated ways of dealing with this.
As such, objectivity's going to be easier in scienceses that are "remote" in some way from human activity (physics -> biology -> sociology as an example). You can never fully rule out bias, though.
It's probably best treated on a case-by-case basis (and in a lot of cases I don't have enough qualification to make a call).
Okay, great. And note that when I say "intervene," coercion is not even necessary. To simply reason with someone or ask them to stop or even distract them would also count as intervention.
Quoting Tom Storm
Would you then say that your interventions were irrational? That your morality does not provide any grounds for intervention, and that by intervening you acted irrationally?
I'm not sure I would dignify my interventions as a reasoned moral position. More of a response to an emotional reaction. In some cases, also dangerous. But the broader question as to whether I consider the acts I responded to as wrong is probably yes. The foundation for this is tricky, I suppose I’ve generally drawn from a naturalistic view that the well-being of conscious creatures should guide our actions.
Okay, but do you see how this is a bit like the insanity defense? When a judge calls someone to account for their actions they might say, "I was insane, I was not in my right mind. I cannot be held to account for my actions." When asked whether one's actions were justifiable this is a bit of a cop-out (unless there was true insanity or loss of control involved).
Quoting Tom Storm
Okay, but do you see how you've moved beyond the sort of consent-based moralities we were talking about earlier? You've basically forced someone to do something that they do not want to do, and which is contrary to their "perspective." So earlier when you said, "I understand that not everyone shares such a perspective or sees cruelty or suffering in the same way," you apparently could not have meant by this that you are willing to allow other people to entertain and act upon their own perspectives. In the cases you outlined your perspective trumps theirs, and you coerce them contrary to their perspective. So it seems that you do think there are moral truths that apply to other people whether they want them to or not, given that you literally enforce those truths on others' behavior.
Quoting Leontiskos
Sure, I have no defence.
Quoting Leontiskos
It has always seemed self-evident that one ought not allow the strong to harm the weak. But perhaps I should never have intervened, and in future, perhaps I won’t.
I find the account of moral naturalism fairly convincing, and I suspect that, if they reflected on it, many secular people would intuitively base their morality in a similar way.
If I have time I'll think about it some more but I'm not sure I have much left to say on this. I appreciate your patience and rigour.
Okay, and as long as you see the point of my objection I am content. If one ought not allow the strong to harm the weak then a consent-based morality is insufficient; and if one were to hold a consent-based morality then they would have to allow the strong to harm the weak (unless the strong somehow consented to being stopped, which they surely would not).
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, I have no per se objection to "moral naturalism" or that specific form of negative utilitarianism (although I would tend to go further myself).
Quoting Tom Storm
Well I appreciate your seeing the point. In general what I've laid out is what irks me about those who hold to subjectivist or consent-based moralities when these same people engage in forms of moralizing that necessarily go beyond their own positions. The difficulty is that when I make a moral claim that they don't like they will appeal to moral subjectivism in order to oppose my claim; but then when they want to champion some moral cause and fault others for not joining in, they immediately forget all about their moral subjectivism. It's that double standard that is problematic: holding others to a standard that one dispenses with oneself whenever it is convenient to do so.
I can see that.
Quoting Leontiskos
A point well made.
Quoting Leontiskos
And I found this part of the conversation useful. Thanks again.
Thanks for the good faith exchange. Well done.
Quoting Tom Storm
Where does this leave the original question? It seems there remains an inconsistency, or something left incomplete, when asserting there can be “shared practices” and “inbuilt awareness that needless harm and suffering are bad” or “moral naturalism”, while also maintaining aversions to beliefs in a “single universal truth.”
Is it possible to grapple morality away objective truth and universal oughts?
Of course, you can make the argument that religion did this. I think that's reductive and probably not very well supported.
I think Joshs answered it on page 1. Part of his answer:
Quoting Joshs
I remain sympathetic to this view and would like to learn more. But I’m not a philosopher, so morality for me amounts to pragmatically identifying the kinds of behaviour I want to see, or not see, in my culture, based on a view of what promotes wellbeing. I think this is generally how morality operates, except where people follow more rigid, proscriptive belief systems.
Ultimately, if you have the tools, you can construct an argument to ground morality in natural ethics, religious ethics, pragmatic ethics, anti-foundationalism, whatever you like. What others think about these options will largely depend on their worldview.
Yeah, I think it's a good observation.
For example, if is constrained to maintain , "one ought not allow the strong to harm the weak," then it would seem that he is committed to the universal (moral) truth, "One ought not allow the strong to harm the weak." This idea of, "My morality does not require universal truths," does not seem to hold up.
This is not a position I hold or have ever proposed; I agree that any form of innatism "is not tenable". My response to @Tom Storm's OP is found here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1029785
But part of me also wonders: if Leon is right, does it really change anything? All it means is that I can’t argue meaningfully with certain members on a philosophy forum because they’ll probably claim my position fails a test of reasoning.
What really matters is the world. I can still vote, belong to organizations, and support values and promote alliances based on my view of what constitutes a better way of organizing society. Do I need any more than this?
Our society is a messy clusterfuck of pluralism, competing values, and beliefs. It seems that all we can really do is argue for the positions we find meaningful.
Thoughts?
I don't believe morality is a matter of "positions" at all, but of a compass based on the ability to empathize with others. To harm others is undesirable and hence bad because it feels undesirable and hence bad to many or even most people. The other point is that a community is inherently based on mutual respect and care. The fact that some people lack such empathy-based respect and care means that they are, if they don't conceal their disposition, considered to be sociopaths, and sociopathy is generally considered to be a condition of mental illness or incapacity to function in a way compatible with pragmatically necessary social values.
It really seems analogous to a cancer cell in the body of an organism. Is anyone seriously going to think that cancer is a good thing?
Quoting Tom Storm
So to my mind, “forms of normativity” and “what promotes wellbeing” serve as placeholders for objective, universal, natural foundations for moral truths. But I think you might agree with this.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, so instead of saying morality requires fixed foundations and authority (which is where I am headed), you seem more inclined to admit fixed laws are hard to come by, and maybe impossible to come by, so “no one really has a foundation for morality.”
I think that is right. That is what morality is about. Maybe Nietzsche was right and we need to move “beyond good and evil.” So your question and intuitions are valid.
Quoting Tom Storm
I get what you are saying. I just think this is a retreat from the can of worms you opened up.
Morality doesn’t begin, to me, until there are at least two people interacting, and a law or other (objective) source of authority to which both people are subject. Morality is the objective umbrella under which human interactions can be judged. Together, under their law, we enter a moral life. If we lose the objective moral law, or say the law will shift and change (so no real law), I don’t think anyone can really argue positions meaningfully. We each become locked in our own subjective positions with no means to show others why our stance is the only good stance, or the morally better stance. We can convince ourselves if we want that our own position is the better one, but faced with someone else who disagrees and calls us bad, there is no common ground or foundation upon which the two in disagreement can appeal and adjudicate right from wrong. And however we work through such a disagreement (force, utility, avoidance), there is no reason to call this working things out moral. It’s practical at that point, or just will and power, and non-moral.
It’s like this: checkers involves a certain checkerboard, and pieces that distinguish two players (red and black typically) and certain rules. If someone removes entirely one of these things, and suggests some other game, that’s fine, but it’s no longer checkers. I get that morality has way more at stake (to us) than a game of checkers, but I don’t see how we can tell anyone else “that is wrong” or “he is bad” meaningfully, absent something objective they both stand under.
So to me, we can’t avoid playing the morality game, so we are all forced to figure out the rules. But if we don’t admit this, and do not subject ourselves and others to the exact same rules, we are just resisting the game we already play.
It sucks. We are blind, adrift at night in an ocean, groping for something solid and fixed. We can either keep groping for a shared port to remove our blindfolds, or just keep swimming. But if we choose to forget the port, like everything else in the ocean, no one can say they have the fixed, moral, good, true, objective, wellbeing-promoting certain position.
Good points. This is heading towards a position of moral naturalism, isn't it?
Quoting Fire Ologist
To me most philosophy is a can of worms. :wink:
Quoting Fire Ologist
It's one direction I lean towards. But I am unsure what I think.
Quoting Fire Ologist
That's great - I often make this point except I use chess as the analogue.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes.
Great post.
I think what you've already recognized nullifies this sort of argument:
Quoting Tom Storm
"Perhaps I need to change my behavior." What I've done is pointed to a kind of inconsistency between your actions and your words. It follows that if you want to be a consistent person and you think what I've said is true, then you must change either your actions or your words. So it seems fairly clear that it does change something.
Quoting Tom Storm
Again, we are talking about you (and me). If you don't think you have a foundation for morality, then your behavior will change on that basis. No one says, "I don't have any foundation for my position but I am going to maintain it anyway."
I understand your point but (and I'm not trying to be a dick here) I'm under no obligation to be consistent. My views on many things are inconsistent. I do concede that wilful inconsistency may exclude one from most reasoned arguments and discourse.
Quoting Leontiskos
Interesting. But it depends on what you mean by a foundation. I’ve met people who do something close to what you describe, and I’ve done it myself. I would put it like this: X is my belief about what is right, and I situate it within a contingent, revisable understanding of what seems to work better for promoting wellbeing. It isn’t grounded in any ultimate moral foundation, but in practices, experiences, and judgments that remain open to challenge and change.
That said, I also like the idea that moral judgments may be grounded in natural facts about people. Humans experience suffering as bad, and conditions that reduce it tend to support wellbeing and social functioning. For that reason, reducing suffering counts as morally better.
One issue I have with this is that some people like suffering and the idea: "no pain, no gain" has some merit for any athlete or high achieving person who has to work hard and sacrifice many things (suffer) to achieve a goal. I guess the moral naturalist would qualify this by identifying unnecessary suffering and that which is not chosen. What are your challenges to moral naturalism?
Quoting Dawnstorm
Yes, that’s true. The anti-foundationalist would probably say that things can still count as better or worse relative to shared cultural goals and values, without being grounded in anything transcendent or universal beyond that. We want safe traffic, so we create road rules. Many of these rules are partly arbitrary; we can drive on different sides of the road or adopt different turning conventions, but there are clearly practices that work better or worse for safety. None of this makes road rules objectively true independent of contingent human purposes and conditions. How different is morality to this?
Right, one could say that there is no problem because they are happy to be inconsistent, or incoherent, or to have double standards, or to be hypocritical. I have only met one person who said such a thing, and they are inevitably on my ignore list (for obviously it isn't possible to talk to a person who flip-flops back and forth constantly without admitting it). Such a person will also end up with a malady like schizophrenia. But I grant that someone could embrace all of this, sure.
Quoting Tom Storm
I mean basis, rationale, justification, grounding, etc. "I have no reason to maintain this position, but I am going to do it anyway."
Quoting Tom Storm
The foundation here is well-being, plain and simple. If one didn't have a foundation then they wouldn't be able to appeal to well-being as a reason for their position. Someone who says, "I hold X because it promotes well-being," is someone who grounds morality in well-being.
Quoting Tom Storm
This is a foundation of "wellbeing and social functioning," which is very close to what you said just before it.
Quoting Tom Storm
A utilitarian will just do a short-term vs. long-term contrast and say that some short-term suffering reduces long-term suffering, and is thus preferable on the utilitarian calculus. Someone who champions well-being would say that well-being means more than not-suffering, and that well-being may involve suffering in certain ways.
Quoting Tom Storm
First I would need to know your definition of moral naturalism.
Unfortunately, I think a required clarification, will defeat this in a significant way:
What relativist are you talking to? If you're talking to a 'standard' Western relativist, yes. It's usually difficult to get answers like in Sam Harris' oft-cited example challenging someone to accept as moral the idea that some foreign culture has a scripture which commands that ever third child is purposefully blinded in service of the faith.
Apparently, his interlocutor said "Then we could never say it was wrong". I am not as incredulous as Harris was, it seems. I understand this to be true, given that those people are not Western. It is wrong to us.
I'm an emotivist so I have to just observe these things - my moral thinking doesn't generally extend beyond my own mind and behaviour (Leon might have something to say here lol). But it seems to me that even being able to ask the question "What kind of relativist?" Or "where from?" defeats hte idea that there's a universal category of wrongs that ca be brought up to one in order to have them eat their hat, so to speak.
I don’t have one.
My understanding is that it’s the view that moral facts, if they exist, are grounded in natural facts about the world rather than in anything supernatural or non-natural. But I have encountered a range of uses of the term.
I imagine that if you’re going to pick a goal for morality, like wellbeing or flourishing, moral naturalism woudl identify facts that support that choice. But does this start to look like a secular substitute for transcendent grounding?
Quoting AmadeusD
So how would you go about arguing something is wrong or disagreeing with others about moral assessments?
Part of my interest in the issue is whether or not it’s worth discussing morality, although we can't seem to escape it.
Quoting Leontiskos
That seems tedious.
Quoting Leontiskos
Ok. So I always assumed a foundation for morality meant something philosophically important, serious and disciplined or potentially transcendent in source. Can one not say that the foundation of my moral thinking is whatever gets me money? I’m assuming that a foundation need not involve beneficial concessions toward others?
When I talk about positions, I mean (as one example) how one constructs the notion of human flourishing. I know a number of academics who are conservative. They are often steeped in Greek philosophy and hold the familiar Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia as the goal or telos of a good life. Yet they are also right-wing, Liberal voters who are happy to cut people off welfare and dismantle safety nets.
In my view, their positions would cause considerable harm to the powerless. And yet they and I both ostensibly hold that flourishing is the goal of a moral system. They think that society is enhanced if people's independence is promoted and vital to this is not subsidising sloth and inertia through welfare. I do not think they are sociopathic, they just hold a different worldview. And relative to my worldview they are mostly "wrong" on this.
We live in a pluralist culture where most people think their views are good and right. The best we can do amongst this mess of contradictions is select the views we endorse and try to promote or nurture them. Or opt out entirely, which is also tempting.
:up:
Quoting AmadeusD
So in what sense is your "moral thinking" moral?
Then they have a narrow view of flourishing as being relevant only to themselves.
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't believe it is as simple a matter as "not subsidizing sloth and inertia through social welfare". That seems to me like a self-serving rationalization of an essentially selfish attitude.
Quoting Tom Storm
OK, then we disagree on that. I think their attitude is simplistically self-serving and sociopathic. For me sociopathy is not an "all or nothing" proposition, but is on a spectrum.
Quoting Tom Storm
I see so much wrong with the ways things are that I kind of have "opted out". I mean I don't get personally involved in helping the needy. If I had significant wealth I might, but I'm a lowly pensioner myself, and I have my own suite of interests and pursuits for which there is already not enough time. I do try my best to do no harm, and that's about as far as my concern with others who are not family or friends goes.
I support the idea of social welfare, free education and medical services and, most importantly, taxing the rich to a much greater degree than is presently happening. But no government seems to have the balls to do it. I see there is little I can do about that, other than express my opinion about it. You no doubt are much more directly involved in helping people than I am.
The contemporary thinker I personally follow most closely is Peter L. P. Simpson, who defends what he calls "ethical naturalism," but it's hard to specify the contours of such a thing without getting into his book. Also, I don't think that level of detail is necessary in order to avoid the problem I've pointed to with regards to relativism. I think 180's approach does a fine job avoiding the problem I've raised in this thread.
Part of the issue here is that I don't think we ever did get back to your question about the is-ought objection. We could do that, but it would inevitably take us into the weeds a bit. Without getting into those weeds I would just say that most people with common sense are not troubled by the is-ought objection. Arguments like, "It will cause exceptional and avoidable suffering, therefore I should not do it," or, "This will contribute immensely to the wellbeing of me and everyone else, therefore it should be done," do not strike them as invalid inferences. There are some is-ought inferences which seem to be plainly valid.
Quoting Tom Storm
Maybe, but it's not fruitless. "Stop eating candy or you will ruin your dinner," is one example of prioritizing long-term pleasure over short-term pleasure, or a robust notion of well-being over mere pleasure-seeking. My issue with that utilitarian move isn't that it is incorrect in itself, but rather that it is hard to justify all of the well-accepted moral truths with that idea.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think so. I admit that I didn't follow your conversation with Fire Ologist very closely, but I myself think well-being is a perfectly reasonable and defensible moral standard. When people want to argue for a more "transcendent" standard they are usually concerned with specific, rarefied moral truths or norms (e.g. "You should be willing to sacrifice your life for the good of your family if push comes to shove"). That's an interesting argument, but my objection in this thread is much more mundane and universally applicable.
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm fine with that. I knew that I was talking to you, and I knew that you held to things like, "One ought not allow the strong to harm the weak." Obviously you need more than a money-aim to justify that sort of moral claim. Also, some might object that the person who acts out of avarice is not moral in the traditional sense of the word. I am happy to concede that, but I am also not as fussy about the word 'moral' as many others are. I think it is a matter of semantics whether we allow ends like avarice to be counted as moral ends.
Note, though, that the person who seeks money will have a harder time rationally justifying their position than the person who seeks well-being. This is because—as Aristotle points out—money is a means of exchange without intrinsic worth. If one does not seek money for the sake of the things that money can buy, but rather seeks money and the accumulation of money as an end in itself, then they would seem to be acting in an intrinsically irrational way. Put differently, you should be able to give someone everything money can buy and at that point they should have no real desire for money. If they still desire money at that point then they desire a means without an end, and are therefore irrational.
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Quoting Tom Storm
I think this is a good observation. You are obviously right that there are different moral positions and approaches. :up:
Quoting Tom Storm
I would suggest that no one can opt-out entirely, except perhaps the hermit who abandons all civilization and lives self-sufficiently in the wilderness. Aristotle calls such a person a 'god' given that this is basically impossible to do. If we interact with other human beings then we must also decide how to interact with other humans beings, and anyone who does that already has moral positions, whether they understand them or not.
Agree.
Quoting Janus
One of the problems for me is that each side in this discourse seems to think the other is sociopathic. Today’s discourse is polarized and antagonistic. I’d like to see more civil conversations between people with different worldviews. I’m reluctant to call individuals sociopathic.
It's not that I'd say the individuals are necessarily sociopaths, but that their attitude of "let them sink or swim" is sociopathic. I don't believe this attitude is good for the individuals in need or for society as a whole (or even for the individuals holding such attitudes). In my view such attitudes and the policies that reflect them contribute to social ill-being in more ways than just their impact on the individuals in need, and in that sense I would class such attitudes and policies as sociopathic.
Quoting Leontiskos
Cool. I'll have a look. That's helpful.
Quoting Leontiskos
Nice. I need to refine my understanding of this.
Quoting Leontiskos
That's a great point well put.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, I have often thought this too. For me, as a non-philosopher with finite time and years left, there is an issue around what I can legitimately acquire in terms of knowledge and perhaps more importantly understanding and wisdom. It's clear to me that most of the significant debates in philosophy, including moral philosophy, require some significant reading and study. Most of the recurring questions of philosophy have not been conclusively answered, and some of those answers are more complex than the average person can ever hope to understand. It's hard to know what to do. Sometimes a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, as we sometimes see on this forum.
What is a person's mandate to figure all this out? It often feels that as public discourse grows increasingly coarse and belligerent, and good philosophy becomes harder to acquire, it is sometimes tempting to just say, "Fuck it, I know what I like and I can’t really do much better than that," or even to opt out entirely.
Thanks. There is one thing I want to come back to:
Quoting Tom Storm
This specific understanding of moral naturalism is also something I am okay with, especially as pertains to the OP. There is a notion in the Anglophone world that moral realism goes hand in hand with divine command theory, and my guess is that this stems from Anscombe. I'd say it is really hard to overestimate how faulty such a thesis is. Divine command theory is a latecomer to the theological scene, especially in Christianity, and it doesn't really solve any meta-ethical questions. Connotatively, moral (or ethical) "naturalism" more often refers to the alternative to the ethical non-naturalism of the 20th century. But that's why I asked what you meant by the term. I am fine with it on either reading, but if you mean something like "non-religious," then it is much easier to agree that it is a reasonable view.
Quoting Tom Storm
I understand what you are saying.
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't think of you as a non-philosopher. I don't think academic philosophy has a monopoly on philosophy. In fact I think academic philosophy is oftentimes positively unhelpful, unphilosophical, and ivory tower-ish. For example, in I argued that my four year-old nephew engages in philosophy, and I did this in response to some TPFers who seem to think that if you're not rearranging existential quantifiers then you must not be doing philosophy. I don't mean that as hyperbolic. That exchange with my nephew was philosophical. It was more philosophical than many of my exchanges on TPF.
So whether or not you are reading through the academic philosophical positions on meta-ethics, I think you are doing philosophy. In all honesty, I think the best moral philosophers are probably not academics (and that some of the worst moral philosophers are academics). Judges, school teachers, counselors, pastors, business managers, sports coaches - these are the people who are actually competent moral philosophers. The best objection to this claim of mine would be, "Well they are morally skillful individuals insofar as they routinely navigate and adjudicate deeply complex human interactions, but they may not be able to explain any of that on a theoretical level." That would be a fair objection, and I might amend my claim by saying, "Okay, but some of them really can explain the theory behind it, and those people tend to understand the theory better than the academics. They engage the theory on a day-to-day basis with real stakes and real consequences."
For example, the person who tries to think through the problem of their estrangement from their adult child is doing moral philosophy in a pre-eminent way.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yeah, I get that. Aquinas says that we should enter the ocean through small streams, not all at once. So you start where you are, and build out from what you already have. Maybe you think twice about your wife's perspective in the last argument you had. Maybe you step back from an unfortunate decision that your boss made and try to understand the way he sees the world, and then compare it to the way you see the world (and try to deeply understand and even justify why you would not have made the decision he made).
If you're thinking about literature then Plato comes to mind. He is remarkable insofar as he exercises everyone, from beginner to advanced, with the exact same texts. Beyond that, good fiction literature is extremely fruitful in a moral sense, because it provides insight into the complexities of human life and human persons.
If you really want to do the academic thing then you probably want to start with handbooks or overviews.
Quoting Tom Storm
The more general question here has to do with the tension between improvement and contentment. "Have I devoted sufficient energy to improvement? Is it okay to be content with where I am? Is my contentment really complacency?" It's always a balance, and it changes with age, duties, the availability of leisure, etc.
For my part I try to devote more attention to the perspectives and moralities in my immediate vicinity (e.g. family, friends, local community, my own country...). It might be fun to read about Confucian morality from 2500 years ago, but if you're talking about a "mandate" then it's not to the point. For example, I am currently trying to understand Nick Fuentes and the movement that he represents, because he is relevant to my country, to the region where I live, to my conservative political sensibilities, to the young men who I interact with, etc. To illustrate, someone like Fuentes says, "I live in Chicago where there is rampant gang violence committed largely by blacks. Therefore for my own safety and the safety of my family I must be racist towards black people, avoiding the neighborhoods where they live and taking extreme caution when interacting with them." The moral philosopher is the person who takes that perspective seriously and tries to interact with it in a fruitful way instead of just writing it off as malicious and irrational racism. The attempt to respond rationally and effectively to those racist perspectives is currently a topic of interest in the U.S.
Gotya. That's a useful insight to me. Cheers.
Quoting Leontiskos
I wouldn’t have expected this, but I can see the merit in the view, precisely because, as you say, …
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
I think this is important. I’m interested in people who think differently from me (part of the reason I joined) and in understanding why they think that way. I also think we’re in a terrible place, even in Australia, where conservatives and progressives (for want of a better term) talk past each other and tend to regard the other side as insane or deficient. We need to listen. Having said that, I’m not especially fond of activism on either side.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, I think it does come down to this.
Quoting Leontiskos
I hear you. I'm probably on the progressive side compared to you but I have conservative intuitions such as wanting to preserve certain institutions and traditions.
Quoting Leontiskos
I’d be interested in what you find. He’s a contentious figure.
I’m intrigued by our own anti-immigration and populist politician, Pauline Hanson. A fascinating long essay was written about her party and its membership, which was useful in helping me get my bearings.
I was intrigued for a while by Roger Scruton and his understanding of the conservative tradition. What are your thoughts? I wasn't on board with all I've heard him say but I appreciated his rigour and he had a generosity that is sometimes missing from public intellectuals who focus so clearly on values.
A well-known Australian conservative commentator once described conservatism as a disposition rather than an elaborate philosophy. I wonder whether you think that’s right.
This may not belong here, but since I started this thread, I’ll ask it anyway. It seems to me that we tend to bundle together terms like conservative, right-wing, and reactionary, even though they represent quite different traditions and approaches. If you were to parse the conservative tradition and the right more broadly, how would you go about it?
I must admit I've not been reading this thread lately. Work's been very taxing and I couldn't muster the concentration. I've yet to catch up with this thread; I'm fairly sure I will when things have quited down.
As far as I read, though, your discussion with Leontiskos was very interesting to read.
Quoting Tom Storm
Pretty much my take.
Quoting AmadeusD
Sorry for not being clear. I didn't spot the ambiguity when writing my post: "to shut them up" was supposed to indicate intent not effect. I'm a relativist myself, and if that sort of thing shuts me up, it does so in a "not-that-again" way.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, pretty much.
My form of relativism goes outward in concentric circles, with decisions often involving conflict:
- interior conflict (and individual wondering what to do)
- conflict between people
- conflict between groups
- conflict between bigger groups
So:
Quoting AmadeusD
This just focuses on consensus over conflict. If I think that's wrong I can find and support elements in that culture that also thinks this is wrong.
Then: given that I'm an atheist (and so is Harris), faith isn't going to carry legitimising weight with me. But whether I can outright say this depends on who I'm talking to - how much I'll get into trouble saying this.
And that can cause problems, too, if I wish to support people who are against that sort of blinding, but they're against it from a position of minority faith, and thus - by banding together - we need to settle other moral conflicts, or agree to set them aside for the time being as much as possible.
But before that: should I even get involved? Is it any of my business? In how far can I make my moral disgust the problem of unrelated others? Am I going to have the mental and emotional fortitude to pull through? What if I change my mind but can't stop the avalanche I've started?
I consider morality an ongoing iterative process like that.
I don't really want to say much more until I've caught up with the thread, as I don't know what's already been said.
That makes sense to me.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yeah, I think conservation of at least some things is something most people are interested in.
Quoting Tom Storm
Interesting. In some ways I think Fuentes is a red-pilled young man with an all-or-nothing attitude. He feels as though if he stops short of 100% he will not have the effect he wants to have. This leads to an iconoclastic attitude towards cultural shibboleths. In some ways it's fairly simple. For example, on race Fuentes has grown up in the midst of an ever-growing problem of black crime in Chicago, and because speaking up about the problem leads to gaslighting in the form of "racist" accusations, Fuentes ends up embracing or at least disregarding the label ("I'd rather be a 'racist' than be murdered"). I had a hard time understanding his anti-Semitism until I watched a video from a British guy (Connor Tomlinson) explaining Fuentes' position in the midst of the recent fallout of a Piers Morgan interview (link). Tomlinson seems to be representing Fuentes' ideas in a much more rational and polite way, and at the same time explaining the phenomenon of Fuentes and his followers. You spoke of the way the two sides, "talk past each other and tend to regard the other side as insane or deficient," and Fuentes is an example of how that approach can blow up in our faces.
The moral question for American conservatives is something like this: is Fuentes an anti-immigrationist who happens to be anti-Semitic? Or is he an anti-Semite who happens to be an anti-immigrationist? Or does it not matter?
The moral principle that few understand is that all immoral acts come down to a form of neglect (i.e. neglecting what one knows they are supposed to observe). Fuentes might say, "When I say 'Hitler is cool,' I am referring to a lot of the things he did apart from genocide, such as raising a nation out of the ashes, or his military prowess, or his style and skill at public speaking." The problem is that if it is impermissible to obliquely affirm genocide, then none of these reasons work as justifications. Or to give a simpler example, if one is not allowed to kill people, then one must also take pains to avoid being neglectful in ways that could cause someone's death. "It wasn't my intention for him to die," is not a sufficient justification if the person was doing something they knew could reasonably cause others to die. But if you back a young man far enough into a corner, he simply won't care about these nuanced moral distinctions, and that's sort of understandable.
Certainly. These, I think, are just super uncomfortable to most people. Leon seems to not be able to conceptually understand that I do not think my views on morality can apply to other people unless they agree to be bound by it for some reason (my wife and I do this).
Well, you've got to stop (not saying you do but it's common) making fun of emotivism to get an answer to this :lol: . It has to do with any behaviours of mine which will (intentionally, or at least obviously predictably) affect someone else. That is moral thinking, no? Yes, it is. I just reduce my moral lens to myself, and how things make me feel. So If i were to for instance attempt to stop someone harming my child, it's not because I think its right, its because I, personally, don't want that to happen because it'll make me feel bad.
But how do you handle the familiar objection to emotivism: that when moral disagreement arises between people who do not share the same emotional responses, the theory seems to lack the resources to adjudicate between competing moral positions?
If morality is just about how you feel, why should anyone else care about your feelings at all, and why should you care about theirs?
The polarization and antagonism can also be simply due to the fact that the two parties are having a conversation at all.
Further, due to the two parties interacting, the polarization can also artificially elevate particular tenets on each side, giving them more prominence than they originally had.
All in all, discourse generally seems overrated. There'd probably be less strife if people talked less.
This may well have some merit and probably explains the English speaking world’s (no doubt others too) taboo on talking about religion or politics.
First of all, Tom, your OP makes a very good point.
But to @Janus -- you touched on the heart of the argument between foundationalism and other forms of moral arguments such as relativism.
The one thing that is always missed in discussions like this is that while the foundationalist view claims that there are universal moral truth, anyone who argued against foundationalism is also making -- though maybe not intentionally and without awareness -- a 'universal' claim, mainly that there is no universal truth and morality is based on cultural differences..
So a relativist has a conundrum -- how to make an argument against foundationalism without making a universal or truth-based claim?
Here is an example, as described by Leontiskos:
Quoting Leontiskos
Moral realism, just like foundationalism, claims that there are moral truths that are not constrained by one's culture, customs, or society.
Relativism is a peculiar position because it is a view one cannot hold without also claiming moral truth which is the very thing it purports to deny.
To juxtapose another moral claim -- moral intuitionists can actually make an argument against moral realism because the former is not denying that there is no objective morality, only that the discovery of moral truths is self-evident.
Quoting L'éléphant
What I'm trying to do is articulate what an anti-foundationalist position might look like.
Anti-foundationalism isn’t the same as moral relativism. Relativism says what’s right or wrong depends entirely on culture or individual preference. Anti-foundationalism doesn’t make any claim about what is right or wrong; it only questions whether there are absolute, universal moral truths. It’s about how we justify moral claims, not about the content of those claims, so you can be anti-foundationalist without saying “anything goes.”
I don't think its an objection to the position. I think its an emotional response to someone else clearly stating the facts of the matter.
Emotivism can't adjudicate between competing moral positions. No morality rightly can, because it cannot appeal to anything but itself (the theory, that is - and here, ignoring revelation-type morality as there's no mystery there). The only positions, as I see it, that can adjudicate between conflicting moral positions on a given case is are 'from without' positions such as the Law attempts to take. I still don't think there's a better backing than 'most will agree' for a moral proclamation.
On the question's face, they shouldn't, and neither should I. But harming others makes me feel shit. It seems to do the same for the majority of people. That's good enough, and the best we can wish for imo.
Quoting L'éléphant
I'm unsure it does (but could be wrong -bear with). Banno has made a very good job of discussing with me moral positions that rest of "what people do". In this sense, he claims (if im not making a pigs ear of what he's said to me in the past) there are moral truths which are not objective. But are true.
A relativist can make this claim - but they can make the claim relative to specific sets of value which are contained with specific cultural contexts. I think Banno's tries to avoid the constraints found there and so its not relative.
Got ya. Thanks.
:up:
Quoting AmadeusD
Your appeal to popularity here seems quite lazy.
Given that everyone is (all sentient creatures are) vulnerable to "harming" (i.e. involuntary pain, dysfunction, loss ... suffering) is a natural fact, this provides a truth maker for the following moral claim: 'It is right to prevent preventable harm or reduce reduceable harm, whenever possible, and wrong not to do so'. IMO, like moral relativism / subjectivism / nihilism, emotivism renders empathy and sociopathy practically indistinguishable.
Because it makes practical sense to do so. Empathy exists.
But this doesn’t resolve the problem, since empathy is unevenly distributed across causes and cohorts. How are we to decide whose empathy sets the standard, and which feelings deserve moral weight?
I still cannot make any sense of your overuse of formatting. It makes you harder to read than most anyone else here. So If i've misunderstood something, that might be why.
I'm not 'appealing' to authority. I'm saying this is what people in fact, do. And that's fine by me. Lazy? No. It's taken quite some time and quite some difficulty accepting this. Wrong? Could be, but that begs the question :P
Quoting 180 Proof
It doesn't. It just gives us an ability to coherently make that claim - not something to make the claim 'correct' in either direction. It boils down to feelings. I maintain this.
People are also, as a natural fact, liable to be taken by an illusion. That doesn't give us a truth maker for "illusions are bad".
It doesn't have to be a universal claim, but merely an observation that no one has been able to present a universal truth, such that the unbiased would be rationally compelled to accept it. The closest we can get, in my view is the empirical observation that things like murder, rape, theft, devious deception and exploitation are despised by most people across cultures. The only caveat being that those things may be not universally disapproved of if they are done to the "enemy" or even anyone who is seen as "other".
Quoting L'éléphant
So, I think that any foundation which is not simply based on the idea that to harm others is bad and to help others is good, per se, is doomed to relativism, since those dispositions are in rational pragmatic alignment with social needs and they also align with common feeling, and also simply because people don't universally, or even generally, accept any other foundation such as God as lawgiver, or Karmic penalties for moral transgressions or whatever else you can think of.
This is the 'bingo' that I think most thinkers miss.
If something 'feels' right to you it feels right. You can of course come to change your mind about it with more information. If your feelings do not fit into societal norms you then bend them to your will as best you can or suck it up. The culminative effect has been what we broadly refer to as 'morality' but I see no reason to say 'killing people is wrong' is necessarily a True statement.
What I personally find most intriguing is the interplay between normative values across different domains, and exactly how different such domains really are. If anything I think the most moral act anyone can make is to sacrifice their own sense of morality for the betterment of others because I am someone who values humanity. I 'feel' that human is good.
Every moral position (realist or otherwise) has problems logically. I think this is simply because there is more to life than abstract truths.
The main argument against an emotivist position that adherents of it tend to struggle with is precisely what you outlined. If there is no point from which two people can agree on then it is impossible to figure out a better course.
Here are two problems with this criticism.
(1) Can this be at all possible? Can two people never come to a general agreement about anything deemed 'moral' from which to build a common understanding from.
(2) Even if it is granted that (1) is possible, then does this criticism not also lie at the feet of every moral theory there is? Meaning, just because someone says or believes they are not X or are Y does this mean they actually are. The subjective nature of the kinds of problems involved in ethics means people either stop thinking and resort to a theoretical framework that suits their 'gut feeling' (altruism, some form of consequentialism, or perhaps deontic stance), rather than actually tackle the reasons they feel they way they do as opposed to what they think is 'right' or 'wrong' or how they morally 'ought to' feel about this or that.
I am unsure. I remain unsure. I have experiences that have given me certain insights, but they are wholly subjective so I simply have to do as I do and question as I go.
The labels we use serve a purpose in discourse not as a picture frame for reality. I do see too many adhering to 'emotivism' or 'virtue ethics,' or whatever other niche carved out in the landscape of ethics, as if it is a writ physical law they must abide by.
They are all useful and contrastign perspectives that can allow us to understand others thoughts and actions as well as our own. I still end on the simple thought that people 'feel' this or that way is better suited to them at this or that given moment. If I need a label to sketch my ethical disposition it is as some kind of emotivist, but (big BUT!) it tells you very, very little about how I regard other people's views and values, how I judge them, if I judge them, and what actual moral theories I may feel are better generally, or specifically in certain contexts.
Quoting Tom Storm
I do not see a problem. Meaning, I do not think it makes sense to view such as problematic. It is a bit like saying 'life is problematic' .. well, yeah! If it was not would we bother doing anything. Problems are good things not bad things; unless you 'feel' otherwise of course ;)
As an explicit example you can ask anyone this simple question:
"What is the biggest problem you have?"
Then whatever they may say think about whether or nto they have really said anything much other than "I do not like this thing" understanding that underneath it there is a whole invisble world upon which such claims remain oblivious to.
I recommend Bernard Williams' 'Ethics and The Limits of Philosophy' if you wish to dive deeper (note: he is not an emotivist).
People experience empathy very differently. I overheard a man talking about the mass-murder of Jewish people on a Sydney beach the other day. He said, to some approval, “they started this.” Clearly, the feelings this event generates are not experienced in the same way by everyone. Especially not by people whose values include antisemitism. The same might be said of people’s empathy for trans people or for illegal immigrants. So if all we have to go on are people’s feelings, whose feelings are supposed to matter and how are they a reliable guide?
I’m not sure this can be answered in a satisfying way, except by opting out entirely and saying that it doesn’t matter, that everyone has to decide for themselves how they feel. But for me, morality is a social phenomenon: it concerns how we behave toward one another, so some account of shared value has to enter the picture.
Being social primates, it is instinctive in us to care about the way others see us, so it isn't a matter of "should care".
People do care, and thus one can easily convey "boo murder" in a rhetorically effective way.
:up: :up:
Quoting AmadeusD
An emotional – arbitrary – "justification" for e.g. betrayal or cruelty or rape. Lazy. :mask:
Quoting 180 Proof
Feelings are far from arbitrary. They’re appraisals of situations which inform us of our relative preparedness to cope with , anticipate and make sense of them. That is, affect reports the significance and salience of events , why they matter to us. Without them, words like betrayal, cruelty and rape are ethically meaningless.
This isn't a struggle for an emotivist. It's just a fact of life. Co-operation operates the way it does and the a majority of people, emotivist or not, seem to understand that. We get on. It is what it is.
I think the struggle comes from others not being able to accept that position (maybe its seen as incomplete? I can't see how).
Quoting 180 Proof
No, 180. What's Lazy is just repeating yourself when you've been addressed. If you're uncomfortable with it boiling down to feelings, make an argument, not an appeal to your discomfort or an ad hominem. It is not my problem if you have trouble accepting that there is no further grounding than your feelings for your moral positions. Do you consistently do things you think are morally right but make you feel bad? No? Interesting.
very well said. I shall add to this that I am not actually required to give anything more than what I've said to support my point. Being called lazy just indicates the bolded above which was entirely anticipated from 180.
This seems to me to be an important insight, despite its apparent simplicity.
To some extent, although you’ve phrased it as “the way others see us” - do you mean that we only do it for show?
I think we are just as hard-wired not to care as any out-group or disparaged tribe will demonstrate. How do we explain the fact that we tend to care about people like us, but not so much about immigrants, the homeless, people with substance-use challenges, or trans people? Huge groups of humans seem to flip into hate, resentment and moral indifference fairly readily and generally find ways to rationalise neglect.
A very cogent post. :up:
Quoting Tom Storm
One could say we’re hard-wired to care whether things make sense to us. If we can’t make sense of out-groups, then that care takes the form of threat, the drive for self-protection and the circling of the wagons around our in-group.
I think outgroups function fine when they stay apart from yours. I, personally, have absolutely no issue with voluntary social segregation along cultural lines - I'm fairly sure any form of Islam which is anything but mild is fairly incompatible with a free and open society - so too is full religious right-wing Christianity.
I just don't know how to create a central control mechanism like a federal govt without favouring different groups in ways that suck.
That strikes me as a mischaracterization of the situation. If I saw someone about to harm my child, my implicit response would not be "this will make me feel bad, and I prefer not to feel bad, therefore I'll intervene". Rather, feeling bad would be a response to the perceived worth of my child and the destructiveness of the harm. If my only motivation were only to avoid bad feelings then I would have to regard sedating myself as morally equivalent to protecting my child. But I don't because I judge the child's well-being to be objectively worthwhile and the harm to be truly wrong. That's why I might be willing to risk immense suffering or even death in order to protect them. You're taking a complex cognitive assessment and trying to reduce it to pure emotion.
Quoting AmadeusD
This proposal seems self-defeating. When you claim that no moral adjudication Is possible you are making a judgement, claiming it is more reasonable than alternatives, and implicitly inviting others to accept it. This already presupposes a commitment to the bindingness of certain norms of rationality, such as that we should consider all positions, understand them accurately and weigh the arguments for and against them. If you truly thought that normativity is reducible to emotion there'd be no point in coming to a philosophy forum to engage in complex arguments in support of anything at all.
Quoting AmadeusD
For example:
Quoting AmadeusD
There is circularity here: "My morality is based on my feelings; and I respect others' rights because I don't want to feel as if I violated my morality." If "violating morality" is just the same as a bad feeling, then it doesn't really make sense to talk about not wanting to feel as if you violated your morality. You could tidy that up, but I think is right. It is a kind of mischaracterization of the situation (and your verbiage betrays this).
Another way to see this is to ask yourself why you respect some putative rights and do not respect others. Is it really just a matter of your feelings? If that were so then you wouldn't be able to give an account of why you respect some rights rather than others (other than a non-rational appeal to your feelings or emotions). But I doubt the situation is as opaque as that. In fact if you give me an example of a putative right that you accept and a putative right you reject, I'll bet I could explain why in a way that is rational and not merely an appeal to emotion.
Nevertheless, they are empathetic.
Quoting Tom Storm
If it is a social phenomenon then based on what, if not how we dispose ourselves and express our feelings? The shared account is an expression of collective empathy. Someone not concerned about people being punched in the face has probably never seen anyone be punched in the face.
Experience hardens or softens 'feelings'. Reason helps us shape this experience into a more sceptical and open framework when assessing 'right' from 'wrong'.
At root I believe the whoel confusion lies in the conflicting uses of 'ought' in the epistemic, moral and logical senses of the term. These seems to be repeatedly consumed and spat out by each by many people trying to hold to a rigid line of thought.
@AmadeusD please see below for my response to Janus:
Quoting Janus
I'm not sure we are on the same page as far as the meaning of universal moral truths. The working definition of 'universal', as I am using it, is that it is objective and timeless and its weight is measured as true or false. They're moral principles that are not restricted by culture, period, or societal values.
That said, I have explained that moral relativists -- which is what you're describing -- cannot then make a claim (someone else mentioned this @Esse Quam Videri) or a judgment (which, in philosophy is actually a proposition or assertion) that "there is no universal moral truth, only disapproval of despicable acts by most people across cultures" because this claim is an assertion, thereby contradicting their own principle.
Essentially you are making an assertion, the value of which is measured by the truth or falsity of your belief. That is why it is self-contradictory.
Quoting Janus
We can't combine 'foundation' with relativism by virtue of relativism's subjective stance on harm, for example. Relativism denies the objective moral truth.
Foundationalism, on the other hand, is, at its core, an epistemic principle whose theory is based on axioms and justification. (I've already given the philosophical definition of 'universal' above -- not to be confused with 'the general or majority of the population).
Please see my post above in response to Janus as to why I disagree with your post.
In philosophy, the justification for any belief-- moral, scientific, or metaphysical-- is a warranted reason (not emotions or feelings) given in a claim or assertion. It is objective.
You said: Relativism says what’s right or wrong depends entirely on culture or individual preference..
This is a claim (see the epistemic meaning of a claim or assertion), which the relativist cannot make because it is self-contradictory.
Not sure why we’re talking about relativism or what it can or cannot say. We’ve already discussed the well-established relativist fallacy in this thread and dealt with it, I do not disagree with it.
I’ve been trying to explore anti-foundationalism.
Not necessarily.
It is often argued that any foundationalism leads inevitably to an infinite regress - what are the foundations of the foundations?
Or it might be simply based on a critique of the foundationalist's argument. (Somewhat as the arguments against the existence of God are often based on a critique of the arguments for God's existence.)
Quoting L'éléphant
If the epistemic principle is truth-based, it will not justify any moral principles. If it is value-based, it will beg the question.
Axioms are a weak foundation for any assertion. Euclid's axioms allow him to demonstrate geometrical truths, but only if they are true. Different axioms, different "truths". To put it another Euclid's theorems are only true relative to his axioms. Or do you think that there are some self-evidently true moral axioms?
A few people on the forum still seem to be defending various forms of relativism, which is why this response keeps resurfacing.
Quoting Tom Storm
To answer the question you raised in the OP, yes, I would say it is possible to make moral claims from an anti-foundationalist position provided that "anti-foundationalist" means rejecting metaphysical or axiomatic starting points, rather than rejecting normativity or objectivity itself. I would argue that a moral claim is simply an affirmation or denial of value that one is prepared to be wrong about, in contrast to other moral utterances that merely express feelings, preferences, loyalties, power moves, identity markers, etc. Given this definition, the making of moral claims does not seem to be incompatible with the rejection of axiomatic moral foundations, and implies fallibilism rather than nihilism with regard to moral truth.
Quoting Esse Quam Videri
Fallibilism, being prepared to be wrong, does of course require a normative framework within which the criteria of moral correctness are intelligible. Anti-foundationalism doesnt deny such normative foundations for our preferences, values and claims, it denies that there is some meta-foundation for fallibilism beyond contingent normative communities. Fallibilism functions within particular normative communities, not between or beyond them.
I don't think anti-foundationalism [I]has[/I] to deny trans-community fallibilism. Personally, I'd argue that such denial fails to account for the fact that we [I]do[/I] judge communities to be morally mistaken and traditions to be ethically distorted, and we [I]do[/I] speak meaningfully of moral progress against communal consensus. Fallibilism is socially mediated, but not socially grounded.
Is this ‘we’ actually speaking from some transcultural vantage, a view from nowhere? Or do we merely convince ourselves we are, donning the grab of sovereign authority while demanding conformity to our own particularized perspective on what is ethically right and true?
Prepared to be wrong? But isn't this antithetical to antifoundationalism as it seems to presuppose a foundational standard of correctness.
Quoting Esse Quam Videri
I think you’re saying that we may assess other communities from a position of our intersubjective values. One potential problem with this is that there are conservative and religious intersubjective communities that would see the present era (and perhaps our community) as a failure of moral progress. How do you determine which intersubjective community has the better case?
How could there be any such thing in a temporal world? In relation to moral thought the only universality I can imagine would be that most people cross-culturally hold certain things to be good and others evil.
Most people naturally think it is good to be good to "one's own" (as do other social animals). The difficulty, given the natural incapacity to instinctively or viscerally care for more than some rather small number of people, is to induce people to expand their instinctive circle of care into a greater circle of intellectual care. And that is arguably what humanity needs if it is to survive.
Quoting L'éléphant
I am not describing moral relativism, because I think there is good empirical evidence that people generally, and cross-culturally, vale and dis-value the same things in regard to the significant moral issues like murder, rape and so on.
And I'm not saying there is no universal moral truth, I am deflating the notion of universal moral truth to a more human and less rigid scale. I am making an empirical claim for more or less universal facts concerning what humans everywhere value and dis-value.
The "foundation" is not some god-given principle, but the generality of human moral feeling. I'm assuming that moral feeling generally is dependent on the ability to empathize. It will not be completely universal because it should be taken into account that some people are congenitally deficient in the ability to empathize, and others are unable to empathize or regulate their behaviors due to psychological trauma.
These conditions are not the norm, though, and would make it harder for one to possess a moral compass. It's hard know just what the percentage of the population such empathy-lacking people comprise, but it seems clear that it is not a healthy condition, and I see no reason why we should not think in terms of health since we do that with the body.
Predatory people in society are analogous to cancers in the body.
Of course!
Quoting Tom Storm
As mentioned in my comment, it depends on how strictly we are defining "anti-foundationalism".
Foundationalism in ethics typically refers to the view that all moral truths are grounded in self-evident moral axioms, divine commands, natural law propositions, fixed metaphysical moral facts, a-priori moral rules, etc.. These are typically understood to stand outside of moral deliberation, provide bottom-up justification for all other moral truths, and terminate the need for further inquiry. I reject these and, in that sense, consider myself an anti-foundationalist.
However, I do affirm the existence of universal norms implicit within rational subjectivity. While these can't be used as justification for any particular set of moral truths, I believe they do express the internal conditions of possibility for moral error, objectivity and progress.
I think this qualifies as [I]weak[/I] anti-foundationalism, but it's reasonable to disagree.
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm not proposing an algorithmic decision procedure or a moral high-ground that can be used to definitively decide all disputes. There's no substitute for honest inquiry in these matters, despite its manifest limitations. I'm simply proposing that our meta-ethical theory at least [I]try[/I] to make sense of cross-cultural critique in a way that legitimizes it rather than deflates it, while also respecting the reality of the limitations that make it so deeply problematic in practice.
Understood.
Quoting Janus
Which has been used as a counter argument many times before.
This is like saying, how could there be consciousness when we live in a temporal world?
Are you saying that the existence of consciousness is just a matter of people's cultures or an agreement among people? What about the existence of gravity? Did we just agree among ourselves that gravity is real, or does it exist independent of what we feel? (Here, I am making a parallel argument, given that consciousness or gravity is a topic of a different nature)
Quoting Janus
Again, a repeat of the quote I made above. The universal moral truth, if you agree that there is such a thing, is independent of what we value or do not value. That the moral truth coincides or addresses the things we value is of a different discussion. Our upbringing and customs and traditions are matters of moral relativism, not objective morality.
I don't think that is a good analogy. Anyway why change the subject? We were discussing universal moral principles, principles which don't depend on the human, but are laws given from above, I thought.
Quoting L'éléphant
Again I say that the only idea of a universal moral truth that I think is coherent would be what most everybody holds to be true, and that it would be true only on account of its being held by most people. This is not an appeal to populism, but to what mentally healthy people instinctively feel is right. So its a truth about the general moral feelings of humanity, not a truth that could be independent of humanity.
Okay, then we disagree.