View points

Funny you should say that because after I wrote that, I thought it sounded Bannoish.

As my views have become less 'main stream' forum wise, it's been harder and harder to participate in forum discussions. There are so many topics which I cannot contribute to at all. The assumed/background perspectives upon which the ideas in posts are built don't jibe with mine.

For example: Is eating meat immoral? From my perspective the question not only cannot be answered but doesn't even really make sense; I guess it doesn't for most anti-realists. The problem is that even with meta-ethics my views are not within the group of mainstream ones. It's been harder to even categorize my views into the distinct camps (even in a broad sense, anti-realism itself probably doesn't fit). So, what does one write? "From blah blah perspective, the answer is X"?

When someone says X is immoral, I have no idea what that means to them. If they add in that they are a utilitarian, that helps somewhat; but there is still so much that is unknown about all the background stuff that made these views appealing to them. It's not as if each particular stance is logically grounded and we can't lay out a world view in a couple paragraphs.

A more recent example was a discussion about the laws of nature. Here I agree with Nietzsche, 'Let us be on our guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses.' What kind of conversation can one have with people that feel that there are transcendent governing forces? So many of the conversations are just people talking passed each other. There are thousands of pages on PF with disagreements about realism vs idealism: the issue isn't that no one is convinced by the arguments, but often that people don't even get each other. There are definitely posters who I don't understand at all. If they jump in with a 3 sentence input into a conversation, it cannot be helpful to me.

This is kind of rambling and suffers from the same issue that I'm trying to talk about. A few paragraphs to lay out a view on philosophical discussion on forums, which I'm sure won't make sense from some of the perspectives of others.

And yet I am able to tell a random person on the street who I know nothing about and who may not share my worldview that I find lying wrong, and he'll know just what I mean. Curious I can accomplish that there, but the OP can't do that here.

I like reading groups too though it's hard to keep up. Not enough people here read the by-month material seriously so it died. I'm about to fill a hole in my reading by reading Critique of Pure Reason if anyone's interested in a slow read. I never have understood this transcendent/al stuff so am giving it another go.

The forums have been very useful to me in a scattergun way. I'm back at college now at age 67, partly stimulated by the chat. But I steer clear of Ethics stuff mostly, both here and in academe , I don't relate to the debates. Ethics I try and do out in the world rather than talk about, based on my politics and a very simplified virtue system - do to others as you would be done by. But I dont eat meat schmik - I invented a veggie character in a story once and she convinced me :) (Sometimes tho bacon is decreed an honorary vegetable)

I can't relate very much with your position, but I suppose it's much like the position of an atheist with regards to many philosophy of religion discussions which make certain religious or theistic assumptions which aren't shared by the atheist.

I don't agree that the sort of ethical question in your example doesn't make sense for most anti-realists. I think that those who would claim that it doesn't make sense are a minority.

I think you got the point across. No need to publish a treatise on the subject.

Part of what I'm saying comes from Deleuze and Guatarri's "What Is Philosophy", so the treatise is already out there though there book is much more interesting than my post.

I'm not sure what ground rule would help on issues, it's not as if they have bad culture.

And his summary of Kant's critical philosophy is superb (his history writing is a beacon of clarity). So I know I'd enjoy reading any of his works.

It was much easier when I held by error theory. Now I don't think that morality should be thought of as principles at all, so when someone makes a statement about a moral rule it's hard to understand. What's their relationship to it, do they actually have this abstract rule which legislates their actions etc. There's something very bizarre about rationally deriving a rule and then having it control you. I've yet to hear someone say "I don't care at all about animals but it was proved to me that eating them is immoral, so I'm a vego". Yet people can debate the morality of eating meat without considering whether the other person cares about animals as relevant.

I think that most people mean the same, or at least similar things, when that say that such-and-such is wrong, but then philosophers come along and overcomplicate things.

The rule-based approach and other such approaches (some forms of utilitarianism come to mind), when isolated from our emotional feelings regarding an ethical issue, seems to move away from what makes ethics meaningful, and move towards something else, such as duty - which can be blind.

How did your your own character convince you of something?

This assumes near universal agreement on moral issues.

Perhaps it does eliminate some of the feeling from the enterprise, but there is a valid reason for doing that, and it's to remove the subjectivity from the analysis. If my sole reason for not murdering is that it makes me feel hella bad, then it'll be difficult to convince you not to murder if you don't have that same negative feeling.

If, though, I have a reason that transcends you and me (like God told us not murder), then that's at least provides an objective basis.

I think your position only works if we're all good people with the same views of right and wrong. Sort of like we all see blue the same way, so we don't need some philosopher offering a complicated view of what blue is. We know blue when we see it. I just don't think the same holds true for morality. Those who share similar norms typically are those in the same community, but the question is whose norms are truly good.

I guess my thinking here is that, though we set out our arguments in the form of persuasion, it might be helpful for people to understand that, in philosophy, few are persuaded. So, at least insofar that we believe philosophy is actually worthwhile, we must be doing something else aside from persuading (though, on the rare chance, we are sometimes persuaded too -- it's just not the norm, at least not within a particular conversation).

Well, fiction is an odd business, to invent it you have to enter in some way into the imagination of the character you're writing about. I had set up the daughter of the (woman) protagonist to be an annoyingly-right child, so I got her (at age nine) to disrupt the household by suddenly asserting the rights of animals - throwing out clothes, refusing food, insisting on separate eating utensils from her disgusting carnivorous brother. And I just emerged from writing the situation, thinking, beyond fiction - this girl is right!

I share your views about thinking of morality and moral behaviour and psychology in abstract and rational terms. We typically and primarily relate to morality emotionally. I think that most people mean the same, or at least similar things, when that say that such-and-such is wrong, but then philosophers come along and overcomplicate things. What most people express is disapproval. This is the case whether they mean to state an objective truth or just their subjective judgement. I believe that fundamental underlying meaningful elements behind the use of common moral language can be known if one takes a reductionist approach, and I further believe that the most useful and meaningful results can be found if one examines subjectivity rather than depart on a wild goose chase by seeking moral objectivity - which, if it does exist, is basically redundant - even if it could be proven.

But from this my issue arises: what is this persons relationship to the rule? Because people do think to themselves 'I want to do X but its against the moral rule Y'. So the relationship must be more complex than 'I disapprove of X'.

If you don't have that feeling, then you're seriously lacking in something which is vital to being a moral agent: empathy. You can't really remove the emotional foundation and retain morality; you'd be left with an empty structure which in some way resembles morality, but is not in fact morality - such as a set of rules. So, you could convince such a person not to murder, but I'd question whether such a person has actually understood that murder is immoral in the way that a moral agent must.

I wonder if perhaps this means that murder being immoral isn't something you understand but something you feel.