The source of morals
First I'm not asking for what is right or wrong, rather were do our sense of right and wrong come from.
Personally I developed this thesis:
We start life with the need to continue our species existence.
Then we move to develop them independently (divine command, unitilitarianism, and whatever else)
then to form governments we use contractarianism.
After these steps we try to spread our morality to others as a sense of approval, the idea being we don't want to live thinking we did something wrong (not wanting our morals challenged).
Those were disagree with are our enemies and we treat them how our independent morals demand (so different for everyone).
I'm sure I haven't covered all my bases so I'm asking for, people to point out my mistakes and contribute new ideas I haven't come up with yet.
Personally I developed this thesis:
We start life with the need to continue our species existence.
Then we move to develop them independently (divine command, unitilitarianism, and whatever else)
then to form governments we use contractarianism.
After these steps we try to spread our morality to others as a sense of approval, the idea being we don't want to live thinking we did something wrong (not wanting our morals challenged).
Those were disagree with are our enemies and we treat them how our independent morals demand (so different for everyone).
I'm sure I haven't covered all my bases so I'm asking for, people to point out my mistakes and contribute new ideas I haven't come up with yet.
Comments (1325)
Seems relevant to me. I have no problem harvesting certain concepts for my own use. Doesn't mean I'm Kohlbergian.
Could you explain how that makes sense to you (as something you're figuring is implied by my comments)?
Yes, I know the government don't care about morals, and people try to manipulate people with there morals. That is were I expect that contracteinsm is a thing but there are examples of times it not the case because contracteinsm says you get someting in return.
If morals are only internal, and have no external analogue, then what I said follows. No ifs, ands, or buts.
The "misconceived ontology" at work here is your facile solipsistic thinking in terms of
If morals are only internal, then you internally possess my morals because?
Try that with something else that is internal to individuals. If desires are only internal, then you possess my desires because?
Learn what "solipsistic" conventionally refers to.
See what I mean? The rationale is ridiculous
How about just explaining how you think it would imply that you somehow have my morality?
But you're using the term in some mysterious, unconventional way.
Huh? I don't follow.
I said nothing even remotely resembling that. Not that it has anything to do with the conventional definition of solipsism.
Quoting Janus
That doesn't follow from "nothing external to the mind/body can be internalized." Again, not that I'm claiming anything like "nothing external to the mind/body can be internalized," but nevertheless, "then you could have no contact with the external world" doesn't follow from it.
"You could have no contact with the external world" would be (epistemological) solipsism, but "thinking in terms of internal and external" certainly wouldn't be and wouldn't imply solipsism.
I'm not saying anything like "You could have no contact with the external world" in general, by the way.
If morals/morality is only internal to individuals, then my morals/morality are internal to me, Joe's is internal to Joe, yours are internal to you, etc.
But you somehow took this to imply "So then, your morals, and praxis' morals are internal to me." So I'm asking you to explain how you're figuring this.
The state provides many services in exchange for our loyalty or participation, such as law enforcement, emergency services, etc.
Quoting Terrapin Station
If you say there can be no morals (no moral behavior, thoughts, attitudes or whatever) external to your mind then how would that not be solipsistic?
If you acknowledge that there are moral behaviors (in the sense of morally motivated behaviors) then why would you say that that those behaviors cannot be imitated (internalized)?
First off, the world isn't solely comprised of morals. That's all I'm talking about there--morals.
Secondly, even if we were saying that it's "solipsistic about morality," I'm not actually saying anything solipsistic about morality. I'm neither saying that no morality other than one's own exists nor that one can only know that only one's own morality exists.
Yes, and I'm talking about moral solipsism, and saying the logical consequence of that is epistemological solipsism. But to discuss that would take us off-topic, so let's, for the sake of being on topic and for the sake of simplicity stick with the issue regarding morals.
If you can't internalize the meaning of moral statements or moral behaviors, then how could you know they are statements with moral meaning, and therefore how could you know that any morality other than your own exists?
In general, there's no requirement that you directly experience something (and so know it by acquaintance) to know it in the propositional sense. For example, it's impossible for us to directly experience neutrinos, but we know they exist via indirect evidence, via inferential reasoning, analogical reasoning, abduction, etc. We know that others have minds, make moral judgments, and so in this way.
The analogy didn't say anything about predictions. That's not what it was about.
Not that it's true that you can't make predictions with respect to others mental content.
Just what I explicitly typed. The short version was the first sentence: "In general, there's no requirement that you directly experience something (and so know it by acquaintance) to know it in the propositional sense."
You raise great points. If you have the time, I would greatly appreciate it if you could address a few questions.
In my view ethics and moral thought are more art than science.
I know what I think, based upon what's been set out heretofore.
Guilty by association.
In addition to the ones we've already arrived at, I presume?
I'm figuring this, because if there is no way for me to apprehend the morals of others, how can I claim, with any reasonability, that they actually have morals too. And even if there was something in another, something that I could not deny, there still remains no way to determine that it is morality.
Thanks for your answers. It sounds to me that morals are being discussed at several levels here (of an individual, between individuals, between communities, etc) and this raises a few additional questions. For example, is it possible to view the morals of a community as a sort of 'strongly recommended advice' to people who might wish to join that community without causing significant internal agitation or potentially upsetting another community?
You wise ass. :grin: Of course.
Actually there are theories of intelligence that are exactly like that, and would apply to moral thought and behavior of others. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Intelligence
Quoting Janus
The vast amount of stored memory we possess of observed and quantifiable phenomena (in the form of sense data patterns) which confirm predictions.
Morals are one such thing.
I woot'n be uh nuthins with mah head all full uh stuffins...
Morals are one such thing.
Need we go on here?
I, myself, am not entirely sold. It's my theory(well, clearly upon the backs of many an intellect). I do recognize the scope of rightful application.
Well said.
Not known for my succinctness... feeling a bit ornery tonight...
There's much to liked about many of the veins of thought herein. It would serve us well to find the common threads binding them all.
I do not want to speak on behalf of praxis. I do think that the above are good questions. I'd like to offer my answers.
Ask them. Listen to their answers. That's more than adequate ground to conclude that others have moral thought/belief.
Look to how different people employ the term "moral". What do all those different people's uses have in common, if anything at all? If there is a central vein that is part and parcel to each regardless of that which is subject to particulars, then we bookmark it as a means for setting it aside. We must do that prior to establishing/determining the scope of it's relevancy and what can be garnered and/or gleaned from it.
With knowledge of what counts as being moral in kind, we can rightly and confidently say - sometimes at least - that another's behaviour was morally motivated.
What is the term "necessary" doing here?
Predicted and observed behaviour can tell us something about motivation.
Mammy?
I concur. Inadequate, irrelevant, superfluous, confounding.
Up to this point, we've done fine discussing the source of morals without resorting to the dichotomy of internal/external. The notion of internalization that has been thrown around here should not be understood as an antonym to externalization, but more as an analogue to personalization or appropriation.
Time to get to it.
Although the source of morals is truly immemorial to a time before the antiquity. People knew something was above the others. There had to be useful rules, and in doing so moral guidelines. Maybe women noticed Don’t spit on the floor, don’t smoke inside, don’t kill people. God could have a major role in morals. Morals are developed over time, so certain morals originate later than others.
There is something some people don't seem to understand (I don't necessarily mean Janus, I haven't been following your conversation). Sometimes it is impossible to investigate directly. For instance, when the subject matter is a "universal thread that unifies a concepts across all particular instantiations", broad/general speculation does not tell us much. Here, it is wise to elucidate the more relevant particulars of morality in order to adequately understand the universal thread that binds them all.
There are many here, including myself, who consider history to be an immensely important factor in the source of morals. But the discussion has not yet arrived at the point where we can get deep into it. But, barring any extreme interloping, we will get there sooner or later.
Right now, we are milling around the notion of ethical authority. I have posited history and consensus as the primary source of ethical authority. Not much else has been said about ethical authority.
I second the need for a certain degree of robustness... explanatory power(of the particulars).
I like that term.
That was a poor rendition of the scarecrow's song on the original Wizard of Oz. A lame attempt at dismissing certain recent meanderings.
I must say, I enjoyed your theatricality. :cheer:
This was the post that ushered the discussion into a period of enlightenment. I felt it necessary to repost it in its entirety.
:wink:
The first relation between follower and usurper is found between the child and parental figure. I would surmise that in all ordinary cases, the parental figure factors as the first ethical authority for everyone.
The result of this struggle to the death is "consensus".
This has some relevance in respect to ethical authority. As an example, it could be further simplified to have a wider scope of application and "explanatory power".
Ethical authority is found in many relations, between: individual and individual, individual and collective, collective and collective, and individual/collective and principle.
before moving to the more advanced considerations, we still need to examine the ethical authority of the individual/collective in relation to the individual.
Just my two sense.
I appreciate your input. But to clarify, we are not attempting to discover right and wrong ethics. We are investigating the source of morals. Other than the definition of morals: "that which concerns right and wrong human behavior", the question of "right and wrong" is not our interest here. What we are doing here is meta-ethical.
I would say they impart a feeble and primitive morality to the child, but sometimes it can really stick.
I was stating origins of authoritative ethics, should I have mentioned Plato’s view of spirit? I apologize for my Tyron understanding of meta-ethics
Or the will to truth out of the will to deception?
Or the generous deed out of selfishness?
Or the pure sun bright vision of the
wiseman out of covetousness?- Fredrick neitzche
What you said had relevance, it was how you said it that was troublesome. I think looking to the history of ethical philosophy would tell us much, not to mention save us from retreading old ground.
You seem to have a decent grasp of history. Do you know anything about Hegel's dialectic of the lord-bondsman?
I'm not familiar with mein, but as a dialectician myself, how can I resist the former, so both I suppose. Codependency too. :grin:
Quoting BrandonMcDade
I'm willing to stretch our thought experiment to the point of considering this. But first things first...
That is the question. Why is it so hard to share our pressuppositions and build hypothetical constructs that may improve understanding by highlighting basic error? Arrogance and ignorance.
No problem. You shouldn't rush though. In philosophy, clarity is always better than speed.
The ego doesn’t just show up after you got to see the world for a bit. It is forming and active even during infancy. Ego must be the origin of any valuations.
This might be true, but we need to take a step back and as creativesoul says, do the groundwork, to establish that all conditioning, moral included, is some kind of trauma. I think that is a worthy thing to explore. Let's set it on the margin for now. (Could make a good thread, or not.)
You already agree with the basic premise that we've built the entire experiment upon. What you call the "ego", we have termed: thought/belief. We have taken notice of everything you have said here, for example, the infant represents the age of prelinguistic thought/belief.
The tide is coming in, and with it the interlopers. :grin:
It would be a huge discussion to get into because there isn't just one way that we do this, and it's not something simple in any case. We probably don't need to get into any discussion about it, because the point was simply that I'm not saying anything at all like "We can't know that others make moral judgments." If someone else believes that just in case we can't directly access something, then we can't have knowledge of it or can't say it exists, that's their problem. I'd not at all agree with them. Maybe it would be worth starting a different thread about how indirect knowledge works, but there's not really any need to get into that in this thread, because I'm not saying anything like "We can have no knowledge of others making moral judgments." I only wanted to correct that misconception. I'd rather we try to stay somewhat focused.
And by the way, the whole "internalize" thing wasn't my doing. Someone else brought the idea up. I only had issues with it because of what it implies, per the normal connotations of "internalize," especially keeping in mind various other statements made in this thread, with respect to the ontology or morals/morality. It turned out that "habitualize" was closer to what was being said.
Do you think that every single mental thing that goes on in the mind of another is something you can directly apprehend? For example, if I picture a creature that I imagined just now, without drawing it, etc. do you think you can somehow directly apprehend my picturing, or otherwise you can't know that I pictured something?
No.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I can't
I agree with what creativesoul pointed out.
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Internalization is analogous to appropriation. Habitualize is an inadequate term.
I would concur. Parents are part of the community. Usually it is the parents who are the authority, however, it is well worth noting that some cases it is not and in all cases, the morality being implemented is adopted(mostly).
This is a nod to the importance of history.
Politics=manufactured consent.
:wink:
Your recent summary of merk and my discussion was spot on. The links to harvard have not worked for me. I may have misattributed meaning to your post offering the link to the test. My apologies if that was the case. That is of interest, and relevant in more than one way here.
What would be an example of something mental, that you don't directly apprehend, that you can know (propositionally)?
I know I shouldn't address this, because you'll probably just ignore the other question, but that is incoherent, because the dichotomy exhausts every possible location.
The notion of "absentee parental figure" is not too much of an issue. In such cases, ethical conditioning bypasses the parental figure, and begins with other societal influences (friends/enemies, teachers, acquaintances, &c.). Everyone is eventually confronted by these influences, and they are all, more or less, quantitatively identical in respect to being an ethical authority. They provide the substantive material which the individual appropriates into a personal morality.
Morality becomes adopted through a complex process of appropriation, in which the ethical authority serves as the primary influence.
Thought.
Thanks for answering. I'm wondering why you think that you can't know that I'm picturing something if you think that you can know that I'm thinking something then. (And personally, I'd say that picturing something is a type of thinking, but maybe you use the word "thinking" differently than I do.)
At any rate, you don't think the fact that thinking is "of" each individual implies that my thinking is somehow internal to you, do you?
Your welcome.
No I don't. I was just working out our misunderstanding from a previous post. But I think we're on the same page.
Communication can adequately mediate realities which cannot be apprehended directly, like thought
So in my view, morality works the same way.
I agree there.
@Terrapin Station (Is there any way to perfectly reconcile the incongruities between actual thinking, and speaking about thought? Probably not. Nevertheless, we can approximate our meaning so that we can arrive at some degree of unification of concepts and speak on reasonably common ground.)
I've said this before, not sure whether on this thread or not, but I count ethical thought as being a broader category than moral thought; moral thought is concerned with others within the community, that is people and perhaps domestic animals, whereas ethical thought also involves that and additionally, involves oneself as oneself and all of nature.
If ethical existence is represented by a circle, individual morality would be represented by a dot in the center.
I don't disagree and in practice I think that's what we do; but I was considering the question from the solipsistic perspective of Terrapin, which says that there is nothing "external" about morality that could be internailzed. I was referring to his bad analogy between inferring the morality of others and inferring the existence of neutrinos.
So, I was comparing the idea of observing human behavior and one's own internal moral thoughts and feelings and inferring their moral thoughts and feelings from that, with the idea of inferring the existence of neutrinos from observed experimental results. I was just pointing out that the former does not involve the kinds of precise predictions, calculations, observations and quantification that the latter does, which is why I called it a bad analogy.
I might say, the ethical is a broad category that includes morality as one of its essential terms. I would say the ethical is about right/wrong in general, whereas morality is specifically about right/wrong human behavior.
Again I was comparing the necessity of the mathematics, and inferences form that, that predicts neutrinos with the lack of necessity of inferences form predicted and observed human behavior.
I am clairvoyant , doctor. :eyes:
Firstly, I like how you included "domestic animals". (For expediency's sake, we can ignore livestock on factory farms).
I think what you say here is a more acute application of how I defined morality. So, I do not object.
I just took the implicit association test for race (between black & white). I like to think of myself as completely non-racist but the test showed a 'slight' (from no preference to slight, moderate, or strong) preference for white people. So on a subconscious level, according to the results of the test, I have a slight tendency to see white people as good or a slight tendency to see black people as bad. I took the same test many years ago so the results didn't surprise me this time, but I was initially surprised.
The point is that our subconscious mind... how should I say this, isn't as aligned with our conscious mind as we might think it is. This is shown in other ways as well, like hypnosis or placebo/nocebo, or just intuition in general.
This is meant to support the theory of ethical intuitionism.
Of course this direct knowledge cannot be deductively certain, so it too, considered from the perspective of that kind of criterion, is really a kind of belief, but I don't think it is a kind of belief based on rational inference; it is prior to all that. This is a kind of Heideggerian point, so I predict you will have no truck with it, but the way I see it is: that's your loss.
The expedient blind eye is turned... :grin:
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Exactly! If I knew how to produce a Venn diagram on here without a ridiculous amount of effort, I would draw a large circle called 'ethics' with a smaller circle within it called 'morality'. :cool:
Like this, without the black blue and yellow rings?
I think I would leave out the yellow ring as well, then what is left is exactly what I envisaged.
I Google searched an image for "ethical and moral venn diagram".
I think we could keep the yellow ring if we take "legal" to mean "established normative assessments."
Consider the moral judgement: "that killing is wrong". There are two modes of judgement. One comes in the opinion of moral thought/belief, it is indirectly related - detached - from the actual act of killing. The other is in the decision of action when confronted by the ethical choice to kill or not; it is based in moral feeling/intuition. This is why I can say, "killing is wrong", and then go out and kill when I'm confronted by the decision. I always think it is wrong, but when the moment to kill arrives, I feel it isn't. Rational thought and irrational feeling can be misaligned.
As you say: "our subconscious mind... how should I say this, isn't as aligned with our conscious mind as we might think it is"
The opinion is the rational part of morality, the decision is the irrational part.
To be aligned in opinion and decision might be termed: "ethically principled".
"Established normative assessments": to me that sounds more like a definition of culture than of law, but I guess 'legal' could be parsed that way. :smile:
How about if "legal" was replaced by 'cultural'; would that work for you?
Works even better. :smile:
As someone once said:
Quoting creativesoul
Then we can kick the ladder out from under us? :grin:
I appreciate that reference to Wittgenstein. :smile:
Referring to Gautama we could say that we lay down the raft after crossing the river because there would be no need to carry it further. Some might say that we should continue to carry it just in case we are mistaken in thinking there are no more rivers to cross, but I say that we might find that each river requires a certain kind of raft, and we are better off not to worry about what lies ahead of us, but rather to trust in our ability to improvise when the need arises.
I wouldn't say this applies, though, when we can see a raging torrent on the horizon; as with, for example climate change; which is both an ethical and a moral issue in the face of which we cannot afford to discard any of our possible ameliorating resources.
To be fair, creativesoul was the first to reference that on this thread.
You are beginning to touch on "faith". I prefer buddha, to leave the raft, and rely upon spontaneous improvisation. Of course, it isn't always the most practical way to do it.
Practicality, Schmackticality! Practical considerations, lifted out of their proper context and deified, as UTILITY, both lead to, and grow out of, the monetization of life. A vicious feedback loop!
Is it appropriate to say the the ethical authority stands in relation to the ethical pupil? Can we call it the "moral agent", as in the one beset with the ethical task? The task is in forming right thought/belief, and then integrating that right understanding into one's behavior - responsibility.
Deception is possible in respect to ethical authority, but not with moral principle (excluding self-delusion, moral dumbfounding?). In relation to ethical authority, the moral agent is only right/wrong insofar as he appears to be. But as he is to himself, his morality depends upon his commitment to principle.
Sounds like the worst kind of tyranny. :fear:
:rofl:
Quoting Janus
Ahhh yes...the utopian fantasy. :grimace:
:lol: Or the enjoyable version: the uteropian funtossy. (Sorry, I find it hard to resist the urge to play with words).
Thespian for life, I suppose...
:cool:
Hence, a single word, statement, idea, or even an implication can bring about an entire change in one's state of mind, emotional state, and/or attitude. These are the results of past internalization, and they are not the only ones.
What is commonly called a conscience is the manifestation of past internalizations. Thought/belief is being internalized. It can be about one's self and/or about others. Internalizing a pre-existing morality results in one's moral 'feelings'. These are involuntarily experienced during certain situations that are morally relevant to that particular person's worldview(morality).
The short point...
Internalization is a fancy way to describe part of what's going on when one adopts another's worldview, or some aspect thereof. When one assents to and/or agrees with someone else's thought/belief, it can become influential in the involuntary sense that it can begin to cause certain emotions and govern their behaviour.
There's nothing new here though. Everyone internalizes all sorts of other people's thought/belief. That is how one's own self-worth is cultivated. That is how one can hate another group of people, despite not knowing anything about them from personal experience. On and on...
The collective conscience is the product of the collective group of people all internalizing the same moral(s) and/or sharing the same moral thought/belief. It's not always a good thing, but that part of this discussion hasn't been reached yet.
I think that was earlier. My apologies for not addressing that at the time. I do remember - now that you've reminded me - wanting to flesh this out a bit. Merk seems to hold much the same view. But I'm wondering a few things in terms of existential dependency. I'm trying to account for what I think you're saying using my own framework. I'm wondering if you would agree to the following...
Ethical thought/belief is existentially dependent upon moral thought/belief. Thought/belief about oneself as oneself is existentially dependent upon ethical thought/belief. There is no thought/belief about oneself as oneself prior to ethical thought/belief.
Is ethical thought/belief ethical because it is thought/belief about oneself as oneself?
Upon what ground do you draw this distinction between ethical and moral?
Are there any examples of either that are not about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour?
I struggle to draw a distinction between ethical thought/belief and moral thought/belief. The most I can say would be that the difference lies entirely in the content. Ethical thought/belief consists of considering an other's morality, whereas moral does not.
It is when conflicting moralities meet at the table of dignified and courteous resolution that ethics begins in earnest.
The earlier bit regarding the term "necessary" is just a vestige of my disdain for the historical philosophical use of the word itself. It is largely the causal factor for my own notion of existential dependency. No worries.
I was being a bit nitpicky... I cringe at the word.
:wink:
Not all internal agitation is unacceptable. Not all intent to stoke another's moral sensibilities is unacceptable.
Those would be some exceptional cases to the otherwise trustworthy rule of thumb in the above quote. The exceptions require specificity. Part of the specifics include thought/belief that prescribes/proscribes everyone's behaviour.
That is much different than thought/belief that takes account of the relevant common denominators. Those are the bedrock upon which to assess and evaluate the particulars.
The moral particulars.
Yup. As earlier. We all adopt our initial worldview replete with moral thought/belief intact.
Not all thinking is picturing. That's why.
We can call the one beset with the ethical task the "moral agent" if we are ok with sacrificing consistent terminological use. Equivocation inevitably leads to self-contradiction and/or incoherence. The term "moral agent" has not been used to differentiate between different kinds of moral agents; those beset with an ethical task and those not.
I would readily agree that the ethical authority stands in relation to the ethical pupil. That relationship changes.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Let's continue with well grounded true thought/belief.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Deception is the name for a plurality of different things. An authority can deceive a follower with a moral principle. Deception is possible for a moral principle.
Morality evolves. Students can improve on a teacher's work.
Because I hold the above, I cannot agree with the quote above, as it is written.
Delusion is the result of holding and/or having false belief. Moral dumbfounding is not always.
Unnecessarily multiplying entities again. I cannot see the good in what this adds.
I don't understand.. What would constitute a different kind of moral agent, for example, one not beset with the ethical task?
I meant the ethical task for the ethical pupil. Sorry if I was unclear. I would never use the terms true/false to describe ethical judgment.
I would agree that our task is aimed at well grounded true thought/belief.
How do you define moral principle?
You gotta separate the wheat from the chaff. All you did was pick out the chaff.
It's actually funny, I added that shit about delusion against my better judgment.
It's your distinction. I was hoping you could set it out.
I'm attempting to understand what you're attempting to convey. A moral agent need not have an ethical task assigned to her/him/them in order to be a moral agent. That follows from our groundwork. What sense does it make then to differentiate between pupil and teacher based upon calling only the one assigned an ethical task the "moral agent" when they can both be?
That seems to be what you're doing below, which prompted this exchange...
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
The one beset with the ethical task is being called the "moral agent" by you... not I. It's up to you to set it out. That would entail contradicting what we agreed to earlier by offering another definition for what counts as moral. Unfortunately, equivocation is unacceptable, and that is what we'd do here if we followed the suggestion. We would be equivocating the meaning of the term "moral agent". That charge holds unless the earlier agreement is honoured and/or remains upheld.
We do want to do that, keep our terms of agreement, do we not?
:wink:
Because I feel there is an unequivocal distinction between ethical authority ethical pupil.
The ethical authority has a specific role of exposing the pupil to moral thought/belief. Other than indoctrinating, and then judging the pupil, the work of ethical authority is done. Ethical authority represents absolute right - it has nothing else to prove. On the other hand, the ethical pupil is always under examination in regard to the ethical task, if not by the authority, by himself, that is why I call it the "moral agent".
With that said, I also hold the role of ethical authority and ethical pupil to be relativistic, in that they depend upon the particular relation in question. In relation to one player I can be the authority, in relation to another I can be pupil.
Perhaps. That distinction cannot be that one is the moral agent and the other is not. It can be the case that they are both moral agents.
The above takes account of some ethical authorities. Not all. Some ethical authorities do not frame ethics in terms of absolute right/wrong.
I'm hypothesizing that, in a given relation, it is impossible to be both ethical authority and ethical pupil at the same time. Or am I overlooking the possibility that we are both ethical pupil and ethical authority at all times?
We should probably parse out what role principle plays in determining ethical authority.Quoting creativesoul
Wouldn't the ethical authority, who believed in relative morality, talk to the ethical pupil about the relativism of morality as though it were absolute? Or, would they say that relative morality is relative, and just as viable as absolute morality?
I would think that it is not at all impossible to do both... teach another and learn from another over the right kinds of discourse(pun intended).
:halo:
Perhaps.
What do the notions of relative morality and absolute morality add to the discussion?
They've yet to have been breached. Perhaps it is time. For robustness' sake.
We could say, that early on in the development process of ethical indoctrination the roles are distinct. But as the ethical pupil matures, the roles become equivocal.
The question becomes, when does the individual cease to respond to the judgement of the ethical authority, and come to rely on his own judgement of himself?
I was just positing the authority of the ethical authority to be absolute in relation to the pupil. That is due to the fact that he judges the ethical pupil, not the other way around. It's not a democracy :party: .
You lead. :grin:
I would say that the morality of the relativist is self defeating , and a bad omen for the ethical authority. That is not to say, I don't believe morals are relative, from a meta-ethical perspective.
The moral relativist cannot commit to principle, he has to view all principles as simultaneously right and wrong. The moment he commits to a principle, he becomes absolutist. The morality of the relativist is a phantasm.
(See what I did there? :grin: )
For the ethical authority to teach moral relativism to the ethical pupil is to hand over the keys to the car.
It is, however, possible that one can be absolutist regarding some principles, and relativist regarding others. This complicates things...
That's why I compared it to appropriation. The adoption of moral principle is founded on intellectual assessment. Appropriation implies that moral thought/belief is founded upon a pre-existing framework of thought/belief about the world. How one appropriates morality is uniquely affected by one's world view.
Quoting creativesoul
Internalizing morality means appropriating it in thought/belief as one's personal morality. It results in moral thought/belief not feeling/intuition. I would say moral feeling/intuition only comes into play when one witnesses an ethically charged situation. And, feeling/intuition becomes most pertinent in certain ethically charged situations that directly involve me - when I become the decisive factor.
(speaking extemporaneously)
As a side, what does it mean when moral feeling/intuition results in behavior that contradicts one's moral thought/belief?
Right now we are pursuing two threads: ethical authority and internalization. Judging by our overall framework, we are mostly on the right track, we just gotta keep the wheels spinning, and separate the wheat from the chaff. :grin:
Whatever happens next, we have at least discovered that societal conditioning is an immensely relevant source of morals. I'm still interested in exploring the historical aspect. But one thing at a time.
Are you suggesting a hierarchy of ethical authority, or is it more complex?
I'm not even sure what "ethical existence" would refer to. If it's "where ethics exists" then the circle would be a small one inside a much larger "individual" circle, but you must have something else in mind. How would you define "ethical existence"?
I was referring to the existing individual who is directly concerned with the ethical.
That's where I'm still at. Equivocation looms. I cannot accept equivocation.
Unfortunately, this is not the case... yet.
There are most certainly societal influences.
Not yet... but we are examining internalization and ethical authority, which are variables of societal conditioning.
I agree with everything above aside from the first claim. The adoption of moral principle can happen during language acquisition. Intellectual assessment cannot.
There seems to be some preconceived notion at work in your reporting. What is a moral principle if not thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour?
I would go so far as to say the adoption of moral principle depends upon language acquisition, whereas assessment does not. All language that is acquired contains preexisting assessments of the world.
There's something interesting happening here. I'm unsure where our disagreement lies regarding the above. Yet, your reply leaves me with the impression that you do not see the agreement. Compare the above to excerpts from my initial report upon internalization found below...
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
That doesn't make sense if moral intuition/feelings are products of internalized(unconscious but operative) moral thought/belief.
So then you agree that not all adoption of moral principle is founded upon intellectual assessment?
I'm making a distinction between thought/belief that is moral in kind (moral judgement about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour and thought belief), and thought/belief that is not (nonmoral assessments about the world).
Not all moral thought/belief is judgment. And, that didn't answer the question...
What is a moral principle if not moral thought/belief?
I'm struggling to see what good it is doing us to invoke these recent notions of "moral principle", "ethical", "pupil", "authority", and "internalization".
If intellectual assessment is a primary function of linguistic thought/belief, I don't see how moral thought/belief cannot be founded upon it.
If all moral thought/belief is about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour, then it necessarily is about judgement, about ought. Assessment would refer to nonmoral thought/belief about what is, what might be, what is desirable, &c.
Some moral thought/belief is existentially dependent upon intellectual assessment. Not all. That is part of the groundwork we've already established.
All things moral are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. Moral thought/belief can be formed prior to language acquisition.
We're teetering on the edge of conflating what moral thought/belief takes with what our knowledge of moral thought/belief takes. Such was the fatal flaw underpinning Witt and many a linguistic since.
It is time to review our previous talk on morality and prelinguistic thought/belief. I thought we had come to enough agreement to move on to sociological factors, but apparently not.
If all behaviour is judgment. It's not. It's quite a bit more nuanced than that.
One can know that they do not accept another's behaviour without judging their behaviour in any robust sense of moral judgment. Typically moral judgment is to condone/condemn, assent/dissent, etc.
So "individual morality" is only a dot in the center of "the existing individual who is directly concerned with the ethical"?
We are reviewing them now. I'm inserting them where they are applicable. The sociological factors cannot be properly accounted for by equivocating previously established key terms. All new terms must be commensurate with what we've already established.
There are also new criterion being employed that are not quite up to snuff. Our foundation for drawing conclusions is supposed to be based upon a universal criterion. New claims are being levied that are not based upon the same solid ground.
That is prejudice - prejudgement. I would attribute that to moral feeling/intuition. Is robustness of sense a requirement?
But not moral judgment.
Indeed. So the story of societal conditioning goes. What I'm prying into is whether or not the story is worthy of assent.
Yes, we are exploring all potentially relevant variables. Only when we measure a variable against the constant can we determined its value.
In such an experiment, misfiring is bound to occur.
The lines become blurred as they ought in some cases.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
This is a good question. It is seems to be about one's own self-image though. Such struggles between indoctrination and self-image are common ans well-known. I think that they point to a deficit in the general understanding and/or certain accounts of morality/ethics.
I'm reminded of the outcasts who are such through no fault of their own.
A sentiment of "You're not ok with me, but I certainly am"...
This conflates power and judgment. The authority has the power to write and enforce the rules of behaviour. There are plenty of examples where pupils morally judge authority despite having no immediately disposable power to write and enforce the rules.
This is what revolutions are made of.
I don't know if we've established the plot firmly enough to even begin considering its worthiness for assent.
Anyway, I see it as:
Assessment is a primary function of nonmoral thought/belief. Primitive/nonrational assessment is associated with prelinguistic thought/belief, and intellectual/rational assessment is associated with linguistic thought/belief.
Moral thought/belief is an entirely different mode than nonmoral thought/belief. Its primary function is judgement. Moral thought/belief requires the faculties of conceptualization and abstraction, which only comes after language acquisition and linguistic thought/belief.
Judgment begins with determining right and wrong principles. It moves further to apply moral principles to particulars. This is the essence of moral thought/belief.
It woud only follow from the above that there is no moral thought/belief prior to language. That conclusion is at odds with our criterion for what counts as being "moral", which was arrived at by virtue of what all things moral, and/or called "moral" have in common.
And what is that? A common mode of thought/belief, that I say has a common function: judgement.
You're moving the goalposts. The new setting cannot account for uses of "moral" that do not involve judgment. All things moral are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Are you rescinding your earlier agreement?
I'm not moving the goalposts. I keep them in view with every comment I make.
I would say: "All things moral are about thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. Hence, judgement.
Drawing and maintaining the distinction must be part and parcel of incorporating the societal aspects. Moral judgment - in the conventional sense - is existentially dependent upon adopting a worldview replete with morality.
It is to voice one's approval/disapproval based upon one's morality. That morality may or may not be the one initially adopted.
I disagree. But, if you can present an example of moral thought/belief that does not involve a judgement, I might better understand.
The example is this discussion...
Yes. It is adopting pre-existing principles that are based on pre-existing nonmoral assessments. The adoption of principle places one in the role of judge. Until it is appropriated as personal morality, principle is a matter of intellectual assessment. We are doing just that in this discussion.
We are speaking extemporaneously, meta-ethically. We must be careful not to confuse our descriptive assessments with the variable (in this experiment) of thought/belief that is moral in kind. Our description of morality as moral thought/belief is detached from actual moral thought/belief.
What we do in this discussion should never arrive at the point of discussing morals from a moral perspective (via moral thought/belief).
(One way, we are thinking/believing morally (judging). The other way, we are thinking/believing about moral thought/belief (assessing judgement). We wish to do the latter.)
We are doing the other kind of thought/belief in assessing the kind of thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour.
Quoting creativesoul
I don't think we ever agreed here.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
By this, I was implying that primitive morality is arrived at during some point in language acquisition.
You never disagreed. And i don't think we ever elaborated more.
Valuation is something we have not clearly parsed out. Imo, valuation does not imply moral thought/belief. Valuation can be imposed on any nonmoral assessment. That a thing can be assessed as being valuable because it is, say, desirable, does not make it a moral judgement concerning the acceptable/unacceptable.
You've lost the distinction which began this all. Thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. You've also rescinded the earlier agreement regarding what all things moral have in common. You've arrived at incoherence as a result.
Now you're just repeating conventional mistakes. I've no time at present. I can and will point them out clearly later on if you're interested.
I'll be interested to read it.
By the way, based on yesterday's exchange,
I thought the same thing about you: "You've lost the distinction which began this all. Thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief." That's what I was pointing out in my post.
I will point out right now, that we never established that prelinguistic thought/belief is moral in kind. I've considered the the entire discussion that they aren't. Based on that, everything I've said is spot on and mostly coherent. Just reread everything and you'll see.
Here you did not object to my point. Let me slightly rephrase it for clarity: the level of prelinguistic thought/belief, at which value is imposed on primitive emotional affection, does not constitute morality - it is an observation of what seems pleasing to me, rather than a moral thought/belief concerning acceptable/unacceptable intention/behavior. You actually seemed to agree.
I consider the function of prelinguistic thought/belief to be primitive assessment; the function of linguistic thought/belief to be intellectual assessment; and, the function of moral thought/belief to be judgement (I'm using the term "judgement" in a very specific way). Each is a mode of thought/belief that we are thinking about (our universal criterion). I propose, while each mode (that we are considering here), is grounded in the former, what actually distinguishes one mode from the other, is how it primarily functions.
In this discussion, it is obvious we are using linguistic thought/belief, not moral thought/belief, to evaluate morality (thought/belief that is moral in kind). How does this not cohere with our framework?
More on the different modes of thought/belief, and the particular quality of their valuations:
Since morality is primarily concerned with thought/belief about right/wrong intention/behavior, it seems relevant to address how prelinguistic and linguistic thought/belief pertains to intention/behavior.
In both primitive and intellectual assessment we find intention/behavior to be focused on attaining the desirable. The former attains the desirable nonrationally, we could say instinctually/habitually, whereas the latter attains the desirable rationally, by intellectual deliberation. In each mode, the desirable is of ultimate value.
From the perspective of moral thought/belief, the desirable is in view, yet its primary function,
judgement, is concerned with right intention/behavior (not intention/behavior which most effectively attains the desirable). In fact judgement of what is right/wrong can often supersede and suspend what is assessed to be desirable. The principled moral agent will always forgo all that he desires if it means seeing the victory of good in the world. In morality, we could say the only thing that is desirable is what is right, the good is all that is valued.
Nothing I have said here is a moral thought/belief, it is all simply my thought/belief about moral thought/belief.
You may be right here. The only issue, or at least the main one, may be due to our not yet having fully developed the evolution of thought/belief from the pre-linguistic through the metacognitive(deliberately naming and further thinking about pre-existing thought/belief). That interim period between adopting and being able to doubt and/or question what one has adopted is crucial to the question in the OP. This is germane to adopting and/or later questioning principles as well.
The invocation of ethical authority made me a bit uneasy. I didn't and still do not think that that time had come yet.
I still suspect that there's a bit of misunderstanding between us. However, I also suspect that it can be reconciled. That's what I'm aiming for at this time. Stand by...
:smile:
There's far too much that we(seem to) agree upon to abandon the discussion.
Yes indeed. Also, our philosophical aptitudes are too great to think we cannot work out our differences. :cool: :nerd:
Aside from times of being silly and/or facetious(which I'm certainly prone to), I typically allow someone else to pay me compliments(tell me how good, or talented, or smart, or whatever they think I am). Around here, compliments are few and far between. That's partly due - I am certain - to my lack of patience at times. I'm also certainly capable of being a dick. In addition, there are many who have much more a vested interest in philosophy than I. Vehemently arguing against my position. The sheer amount of vitriolic rhetoric astounds me...
However, I've also actually had a couple of participants here and elsewhere ask me in pms if I was worried about my ideas being stolen, going as far as to say I ought be. I'm not. I've got more than enough timestamped original material to prove beyond any doubt that these are my ideas that I'm working through the consequences of. Besides that, my sources of income have nothing to do with philosophical endeavors, but everything to do with other critical thinking, problem solving, abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, systems analysis and/or development, and other such creative endeavors. And yet... I'm a very boring guy, with a very boring life, and that's exactly how I like it. No surprises, no unexpected results...
That said, which is too much, I do appreciate your involvement with me here and thank you for the compliment. Perhaps that helps you to get a better 'feel' for your interlocutor... me!
:wink:
Your welcome. And, the feeling is mutual. :up:
So, it seems we can isolate one primary disagreement and go from there. There's a few that need worked through. It would behoove us both, I think, to work through them carefully beginning with the following...
I hold that moral thought/belief can be prelinguistic on the basis that all things moral are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. This pre-linguistic moral thought/belief would be rudimentary in complexity level, but counts as being moral - in kind - as a result of what it's about(the content of the correlations).
You disagree on the basis that all moral thought/belief is moral judgment.
Does this capture one(primary on my view) disagreement in a nutshell?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I agree here. The prelinguistic thought/belief that I'm counting as moral - in kind - does not count as being a choice about what I ought do. Rather, it counts as being moral - in kind - as a result of the content of it's correlations. It's about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief and/or behaviour.
This is at the rudimentary level of complexity, nearly bare-bones, but not quite. This example was invoked earlier by praxis I think anyway, as an equivalent candidate for the emergence and/or origen of moral intuition. I cannot say that I would disagree with that assessment aside from not seeing the need for the notion of "intuition", because it can be properly captured and/or explained in terms of thought/belief. Hence, I invoked Ockham's razor...
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I agree with this as well. It also poses no coherency issues with what's been set forth heretofore.
On my view, this scenario would be accounted for by noting that language acquisition is necessary for all thinking about thought/belief. The term "necessary" here refers to existential dependency. Thinking about thought/belief(metacognition) is existentially dependent upon something to think about and a means of doing so. Complex language use is more than adequate. We use all sorts of names to refer to mental ongoings. Imagination, reasoning, rational thinking, thought, belief, ideas, etc... On my view, all of these reduce to thought/belief and/or thinking about thought/belief, depending upon the complexity level and whether or not the candidate under consideration is itself existentially dependent upon language.
So, we agree that subsequent intentional deliberate thinking about pre-existing thought/belief(prelinguistic) is primarily acquired from culture(language acquisition and subsequent use). That is to say that one's evaluation of one's own worldview is acquired from and is thus existentially dependent upon the society one is born into. However, there must must be something to think about. So, it is not quite accurate to say that the evaluation is not existentially dependent upon pre-linguistic thought/belief as well.
The main difference it seems is that I hold a minimalist criterion for what counts as being moral - in kind - whereas you hold a more complex notion of what counts as moral thought/belief.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
We do agree regarding morality. Morality is codified moral thought/belief. Prelinguistic thought/belief that is moral - in kind - (on my view at least) is inadequate for morality. So one cannot have pre-linguistic morality, but can form pre-linguistic thought/belief - that is moral in kind - as a result of it being about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
I suppose a criticism of my position above could be levied with a simple question:What is the difference between being about thought, belief, and/or behaviour and being about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour?
Perhaps that is what underwrites your invocation of "valuation"?
I'll pause at this point, and wait for your response.
I think it identifies the discrepancy close enough for our purpose here. I'm interested to see what we find out. You've already began to address the relevant points...
Quoting creativesoul
We agree: "all things moral are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour." I took the liberty to assume the terms "acceptable/unacceptable" were an inferrence to "right/wrong". Now I'm pretty sure that assumption was an error.
I think parsing out the difference between these terms will help us to better understand morality and thought/belief that is moral in kind. I also took these to be analogous. But I'm open to what their distinction may entail.
Let's continue...
Quoting creativesoul
I feel that we are not so far apart. Can you elaborate more on how prelinguistic thought/belief is moral in kind? I'm having trouble understanding this. Is there such thing as prelinguistic moral thought/belief? My thought was that thought/belief cannot be moral in kind unless it becomes actual moral thought/belief.
To reiterate my position, I hold all linguistic thought/belief to be predicated on pre-linguistic thought/belief. There are myriad modes of linguistic thought/belief, moral thought/belief is just one. Of the many things language acquisition brings with it, are 'conceptual' thought/belief, and 'abstract' thought/belief. Moral thought/belief is pre-conditioned and dependent on conceptualization and abstraction, and only arrives after these faculties are adequately developed.
Thought/belief that is moral in kind is a judgement about right thought/belief/intention/behavior. The act of judging is where morality first appears for the individual. It arrives with the encroachment of, what we can provisionally denote as, ethical authority, who exposes him to moral principles. All moral principles prescriptions and descriptions of right/wrong. The prescriptive principle "thou shalt not murder" is inherently descriptive by inferring "murder is wrong"; conversely, the descriptive principle "murder is wrong" is inherently prescriptive by inferring "thou shalt not murder". The appropriation of moral principles into moral thought/belief is necessary for judging, but the principles as they are in themselves, do not judge, rather judging occurs when principle is applied.
After considering all this, I am willing to retract certain speculations I've been pursuing, and re-assess both "moral principle" and "judgement" as thought/belief that is moral in kind, up to and including the above. Existential quantification, bitch! :joke:
I hope you appreciate that I am not an obstinate dick.
I'm hoping your response will fill in some gaps and clean up any faulty logic.
I'll wait for your response.
In the meantime I'll say that we are doing a rare thing on TPF. We are proving something. I don't mean about the source of morals, but about philosophical discourse. We are demonstrating a most effective way to conduct a philosophical thought experiment.
The one thing is that we are not dogmatic about our premise or methodology, as if methodologically building off a premise constitutes some gospel truth. A premise is just a starting point, a common ground where we unify our fundamental concepts. A methodology is just a conveyance, a consistent a way of proceeding. When we finish, we will have said nothing, but at least we will have said it, and that's something.
In my first reboot of judgement, I begin by saying: judgement is the application of moral principle.
I find two apparent modes, which may turn out not to be judging at all. One is direct, in which I make a right/wrong decision in respect to moral principle (when I choose not to steal). The other is indirect, as in the implication of myself or another in right/wrong in respect to moral principle (when I rebuke the thief). Decision, obviously, poses more immediate consequence than implication.
My thought exactly.
The criterion you've put forth here cannot account for moral discourse because being moral according to your criterion requires moral judgment(approval/disapproval). Not all discourse about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour consists of such judgment. It is all moral discourse nonetheless.
How we arrive at our criterions matter. Universal criterions are easy enough to refute should one feel the need. One example to the contrary. That is what I've just done. Not all things moral consist of approval/disapproval(moral judgment). Thus I reject that offering. All things moral are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Upon what ground are you rejecting it in lieu of your own? I've shown an exception to yours. There are none to my own. How do we reconcile this?
The posts were made out of order, so you may not have read my earlier post. After further considerations, I've determined that moral thought/belief is not just limited to judgement. I have now identified moral principle as another type of moral thought/belief. As it stands now, principle and judgment represent two of the primary types of moral thought/belief. Perhaps there are more.
We might consider another type of moral thought/belief to be involved in the feeling/intuition of conviction (as in the adoption of or conformity to a set of moral principles).
Moral principle is an ethically charged intellectual assessment on acceptable/unacceptable thought/belief/behavior, and functions by introducing moral thought/belief to a preexisting framework of nonmoral thought/belief. It gives us a fundamental basis for moral learning/teaching, a precondition for moral discourse...judgement can then be considered the application of moral principle.
One thing that we need to address is prelinguistic thought/belief that is moral in kind...in other words, prelinguistic thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. My question is how can we account for the notion of "acceptable/unacceptable" in the absence of language?
Imo, prelinguistic thought/belief is limited to nonrational and immediate corellations/associations/connections - primitive assessments. From the perspective of linguistic thought/belief, it is easy to impose the terms of acceptable/unacceptable upon the prelinguistic form, but from the perspective of prelinguistic thought/belief, the faculty of conceptualization has not yet been developed. As such, there can be no concept of acceptable/unacceptable. Prelinguistic thought/belief is incapable of the mode of thought/belief necessary to create/discover a rational worldview, and it certainly is incapable of abstraction, which is a necessary faculty for applying more complex concepts (like moral principles) onto particulars.
My question is what makes them both moral - in kind?
That brings up a great point...how are we defining "moral in kind"? How does it differ from morality?
All things called "moral" are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. There are no exceptions. Thus, there is no stronger justificatory ground upon which to build a knowledge base regarding morals. We look to language use of the term "moral". We look to language use of the term "morality". We look to language use of all terms prefixed by and/or otherwise adjoined to the term "moral". Do they all have anything else in common aside from sharing a namesake?
Yes. They do.
All of these things called "moral", all of these uses of the term "moral" share a binding and relevant common denominator. Their content. What all of them are about. We can readily acknowledge this.
Discourse. Thought/belief. Intuition. Feeling. Attitude. Disposition. Lessons. Principles. Guidelines.
The above list provides additional elements to our consideration. This is meant as a deliberate attempt to further drive this point home. All of the above can be sensibly pre-fixed with the term "moral". Doing so is to say that those things are moral - in kind. Some kinds of discourse, thought/belief, intuition, feelings, attitudes, dispositions, lessons, principles and guidelines are moral in kind because they are moral in their constitution, not just because we call them "moral". They all consist entirely of thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
This is also immune to Witt's argument against essentialism. I'm not arguing for the essence of anything. Nor would I. Rather, I acknowledge that Witt has made a great point. Here's what I walked away with, so to speak...
There are many names that pick out and/or refer to a plurality of different individual things. Such things sometimes have nothing in common to all aside from sharing the namesake. Hence, I agree with Witt regarding what all games have in common. I further acknowledge that any subsequent consideration regarding these kinds of groups(the ones that share only the namesake) is not amenable to arriving at a universal criterion based upon that namesake.
All things called "moral" are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Perhaps we need to also set out how we arrived at the universal criterion for thought/belief?
This is well trodden ground.
How dare you assume I'm astute, you inconsiderate bastard. :joke:
Ok, just clarifying. So, we can say, that which is moral in kind is equivalent to:
Quoting creativesoul
I would say anything codified would require language. I don't see how I have been considering it otherwise in any of my posts. Please feel free to point out where I have done so.
Quoting creativesoul
I'm game. I believe we called it something like existential quantification.
:meh:
That would only mean that I win. Sounds like a tragic outcome to me.
There has been considerable groundwork done heretofore. It stands without subsequent refutation and/or valid objection.
The recent current veins of thought are not taking the groundwork into proper and rightful consideration. That seems to be the problem I'm seeing.
Then all you need to do is specify where my specific assertions are at odds with that groundwork, and I will gladly correct my mistakes. There has to be one clear cut example. Please present it as elementarily as you can.
No. We cannot. At least not if we hold to our groundwork.
All moral things are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief and/or behaviour. Morality requires language. Thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour does not. That which is moral in kind is not equivalent to morality. The aforementioned list of moral things are all moral things. They are not all morality. Not all moral things are morality.
By the way, I have retracted and re-assessed many claims I have previously made, based on your criticisms.
Perhaps we need to review some of these considerations.
Perhaps.
Hopefully that time will come. Knowing the evolutionary origen of anything depends upon knowing that much... morals notwithstanding.
That is what I needed to hear. Do you not agree, that this distinction between moral-in-kind and morality is of essential importance here? We have barely discussed it.
I just need it clarified a bit more and we will be back on track.
That's philosophy.
Btw, we have worked out these misunderstandings numerous time throughout the course of this thread. Why would we assume this misunderstanding would condemn the conversation.
Go on...I'm listening.
What question would you like an answer to?
As I said in the portion of my reply that has been left unattended...
We're not even close to being there yet.
Can you explain what you mean by "moral-in-kind" and "morality". What is it that unifies them, and in what ways are they different?
I admit, I have made no distinction the entire discussion. What a fuck up on my part. So as a philosopher, heal my wound, I'm bleeding bad understanding.
They are both names. I do not even know what it could even mean to talk about 'unifying' them.
What they pick out to the exclusion of all other things is what makes them different. They pick out different things. "Moral in kind" picks out all things called "moral", in particular, it points - when properly understood - to exactly what it is that makes them moral things and not some other kind of thing.
Moral discourse. Moral thought. Moral belief. Moral sentiment. Moral judgment. The moral of the story. Etc.
Being about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour is what makes something moral in kind.
"Morality" is one of those things that is moral - in kind. Morality is the written rules of acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. Moral belief is belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. That's what makes it moral - in kind. Morality is codified moral belief. All morality is moral thought/belief. Not all moral thought/belief is morality.
I should've attended to some of the earlier posts you made. Some seemed like a misunderstanding was at work. It's nice when they work themselves out. I'm certain they can.
I agree, to the degree that I understand this yanked out of context. There's a popular game where a thinker pretends to have no perspectives or all perspectives at the same time. In my view, that's finally a bogus position. And if we drop out of the fantasy land of intellectual talk, this becomes extremely obvious. We don't thrive in this society long enough to learn fancy words unless we've been deeply trained on some fundamental things that we have never even bothered to question. I don't have to remind myself not to play with my poop. And that's a second point I should sneak in. Lots of morality is automatic, and it's arguably this automatic stuff that's decisive.
Yup. The task here is taking proper account of all that.
We all adopt(almost entirely) our initial original worldview, replete with morality intact. That's true for everyone, regardless of that which is subject to the individual particular situations(family, culture, history, society, etc.)
The morality one first adopts, and later comes to question, is (largely)relative to the situations they are born into and live through(take part in).
Be careful here. Not all intellectual talk is to be shunned simply because it is intellectual talk. Your post, for instance... plenty intellectual without fancy words. I like it.
I agree. I don't remember being potty trained, and I don't need a theoretical justification for the wrongness of hurting cats when I walk at night. Or of covering my mouth when I cough. So I'd say that within a culture the conscious moral discussion is focused on difficult cases where the gut-level principles of a culture clash.
I agree that intellectual talk shouldn't be shunned just 'cuz. It's a fairly innocent pleasure even when nothing is at stake. And actually I have dabbled in trying to frame a relativism that didn't eat itself. It's like a chess problem.
As a matter or morality or taste, though, I like being able to downshift into real talk. We've probably all met a few people who can't switch off the video game and speak usefully about the real world that sooner or later we end up having to deal with.
Indeed. Our awareness of differences is heightened during conflict between opposing moral thought/belief. That is particularly the case when they've been held for a long time period. In these situations it is also often the case that there are innumerable other beliefs connected to them in some important way. Conviction of the moral variety can take hold. Righteous indignation can result, on both sides...
I agree. I suggest that consciousness is 'summoned' to interruptions of otherwise smooth, automatic, habitual know-how. This is an old idea, but I think it's solid.
If our breathing comes to our attention, we can control it. But we breath also when we don't think about our breathing.
Those considerations are needed for establishing a timeline of/for the evolution of thought/belief. It's one part of a more complex process. It is not required for one to adopt and/or have and express morals. Rather, it is required for one to have knowledge of how we've come to have them(the origen of morals). It can also help parse out the different things that we attach "moral" to such as principles.
This needs addressed more to both of our satisfaction. Next time. Until then, just wanted to let you know that I'm working on this aspect.
Very early in the thread I said this:
Quoting Janus
And you responded with this:
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I haven't changed my opinion at all form the above insofar as I would say that it lays out the evolutionary and biological conditions for the advent of proto-morality, "proto-morality" being the kind of bonding social behavior that is accepted within groups of social animals. It's opposite proto-amorality would be deviant behavior which disrupts the order of the group.
Humans, by virtue of language, have transcended the merely instinctual imperative to adhere to proto-moral behavior, but they are nonetheless socially conditioned and inculcated into pre-reflective moral (and obviously other) worldviews, that form cultural and conceptual contexts, contexts only within which questioning of those paradigms may later become possible. And as I have repeatedly said, in this thread, the questioning is only relevant if it has inter-subjective significance, and could come to be inter-subjectively agreed upon. So, as a counterexample that proves the rule, if someone were to question and reject the idea that murder is wrong, that would put the person immediately outside the moral context of the community, and hence render the person irrelevant, since the community could never come to assent to such a moral revision.
And the flipside of all this is the other engine which drives and determines the communally shared and/ or enforced mores under which we all live; namely power relations. But again, I don't believe power relations determine the most important and fundamental mores; those that are concerned with "life and death". Those are universally cross-cultural.
Well said. Nice general outline. Also completely commensurate with what I'm attempting to establish with some common sense logical groundwork.
As we've discussed in past, and as I've repeated here in this thread... I'm not yet entirely sold that I have stumbled upon a basic framework that can exhaust all the important aspects of morality. However, if morality is the result of evolution, if it consists entirely of thought/belief, and if I have thought/belief right(from prelinguistic onwards), then the framework ought show some potential/promise(pun intended). Sorting through it all is quite the task. Impossible without others.
:wink:
I appreciate your participation.
The notion of "acceptable/unacceptable" consists of language use(thought/belief statements). As is the case with all thought/belief, thought/belief about those two terms consists entirely of mental correlations drawn between different things. In this case one of those things is the language use itself.
That's the wrong question to ask.
We cannot account for anything if we do not have language. It does not follow that what we're taking account of is existentially dependent upon being taken account of. Some things exist in their entirety prior to our account of them. Prelinguistic thought/belief is one such thing. Some of it is about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour.
How can it be the case that prelinguistic thought/belief can be about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour?
That's a much better question by my lights.
In short, pre-linguistic thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour can be formed and/or held(re-formed) when a pre-linguistic creature replete with the ability to draw a correlation, association, and/or connection between different things makes that connection between another's harmful behaviour and the resulting onset of discontent.
These things happen on a daily basis. They will continue to do so. What possible ground could serve to deny this?
Would anyone here be willing to say that we cannot form, have, and/or hold thought/belief about behaviour that we do not accept, behaviour that we outright reject - at that moment - simply because we have not yet acquired the common language used to talk about it?
All things moral...
:cool:
How do we define the rule maker, and the rule taker, and what are the details of their relation?
I like the use of the term proto-morality.
Under our criterion, it would be thought/belief about evolution, by which we could talk about evolution of thought/belief. It is very paradoxical.
I might call this primitive ethics. I have trouble understanding ape morality. :grin: Nevertheless, it does count as "moral-in-kind"
I have previously agreed with myself that morality pertains to thought/belief about right/wrong in respect to human thought/belief/intent/behavior. By that, I meant to rule out proto-morality as a domain of morals, not to say is isn't a necessary source of morals.
They don't. Only rudimentary moral belief are possible(similar to Janus' "proto-morality" and some notions of "moral intuition"). Morality and morals both require language. There are no prelinguistic morals or morality.
Not all thought/belief about evolution is moral in kind. Paradox is a result of inadequate framework. No need for paradox here.
Ok, good. I'm glad we don't have to go over that again. :smile:
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Precisely!
I'm glad you made these points explicit. :up:
Quoting ghost
All conscious moral thought/belief are founded on myriad, subconscious, nonmoral and moral assessments that are acquired through prior experience.
The automatic stuff lies in subconscious thought/belief as embedded valuations. Yet, not all prexisting valuations that factor into moral thought/belief are moral in kind.
I agree. I guess I was generally trying to point how much of our morality is 'beneath' the artificial theories we construct on top of that darkness. I'd say that the ultimate source of morals is as obscure as why there is something rather than nothing. But we can naturally think in terms of our genetic and historical evolution. This connects to the complexities of what we mean by 'source' and 'explanation.' Roughly I'd say that the human intellect looks for the knobs and handles by which it can control its environment, including its social environment. Even if we sometimes don't have the power to turn those knobs (by going back and time and changing history or the human genome), we look for them and contemplate alternate realities resulting from alternate settings, etc.
I second that. There is always a greater need for more reference to real world examples, nothing gives greater sense to video-game speech (just as video-game speech gives relevance to the real world). A balance must be strived for.
I agree. We don't want to be lost in unnecessary complexity, and we also don't want to be so anti-intellectual that we can't manage a good model. Theory-heads tend to underestimate the understanding of those more careful about their style, I think. And anti-intellectualism can sometimes just be stupid and see nonsense in that which it hasn't had patience or ability for. To me this is like an existential issue. One can never be sure. The theory-head (or mystic) could be lying to himself. The anti-intellectual might just be lazy are not quite sharp enough to get it. And then we have vanity to contend with. How much failure to get it is just vanity?
Consciousness is a ship at sea. It cannot ever hope to fathom the depths of its necessity. But we might be able to go fishing, and catch some reasonable genetic or historic explanations. I like fishing.
I agree. I like noticing the darkness that surrounds us...but then getting out my fishing pole. I'm at peace with our ultimate ignorance. There is even something beautiful about an existence that is too large for our finite, problem-oriented minds. What's the alternative, after all? An endless game of Donkey Kong?
Well put, the more we know, the less we know. This is why I embrace 'Socratic ignorance '.
Same here. I also think this is some of the best stuff in Wittgenstein and Heidegger. The 'form of life' is mostly invisible. The foundation of our inquiry is inaccessible. We can always already speak. Our language is more complex and elusive than can be mastered by artificial theories. Practice is ahead of theory.
For me this is not anti-theory, but it does free us from an obsession with artificial foundations. I like to think that we creatively forge phrases. Some of them prove themselves, others don't. I like this about Popper. We don't know (and it doesn't matter) where theories come from. It's how we judge them that matters. It's holding the results of our mysterious creativity up to the fire of reality and criticism.
This touches on something creativesoul and I have discussed earlier on this thread - methodology and premise. I came to the conclusion that the foundation of the premise of any theory is inaccessible. The best we can do is presuppose the premise and proceed to investigate through strict methodology, which, at least, allows us to proceed with some consistency of logic. It is likely that we will find out nothing about the subject of our investigations. Reality and criticism will always prevail in negating theory. Despite that, what is of value is the actual conducting of the thought experiment. Only by doing so can we see it for what it is, and judge it by it's true merits.
That makes sense to me. I think we also have social conventions about what moves are allowed in the game. I call these something like power dynamics. It's about everyone getting along. I think this is related to logic. It's not that we have proved that no one has mystic access to the truth. It's just that we are the kind of people who don't play the game that way. So 'logic' or 'reason' is an abbreviation for some kind of simultaneously epistemological and moral background. We are never done specifying what it is to be rational, but we know well enough.
I like how you circled back onto the automatic stuff, subconscious thought/belief factors into everything we assert.
I do think it's huge. I guess the fault of intellectuals tends to be pretending that they aren't all riding dark horses whose names they do not know. I do see that this insight is related to a dangerous irrationalism. The danger on the otherwise is a dogmatism that thinks it knows and speaks from a pseudo-foundation, a cheap low complexity model of something that dwarfs and surprises it.
Personally I don't think there's a clean break between philosophy and character. With science we can pretty much do that. But as philosophers I think welive our finitude. Rorty writes of 'final vocabularies.' I'd say these are words that aim at basic intuitions of decency and rationality and maybe even masculinity that we just can't question ---or justify in other terms. We see how nasty things get in the politics threads. We lose our heads when we run out of words.
Well said. This places the utmost importance on being clear with respect the rules we are playing by. When we consider all the subconscious thought/belief that is not readily accessible, it seems, this getting along is essential to moving us forward in our theorizing..
I agree, but I'd add that we have to already be in on something friendly to begin with in order to set up the rules. So that suggests that the rules are still a little artificial, however useful. But I am down with conventions. Sometimes they help (like clear rules about what can be talked about on this forum, or rules against personal insults, etc.)
Rules are indeed useful.
This something friendly is part of social aptitude. Perhaps it is the ability to make oneself agreeable to alien thought/belief. The rules, whether in regard to logic or moral reasoning, demand conformity, and imply an altering of one's thought/belief so as properly to abide by the rules. In this sense, rules are absolutely artificial.
This brings us to the question of responsibility. When one has the choice to follow the rules or not. For example, when it becomes possible to consciously transgress the rule (e.g. do not to speak in tongues, or do not commit murder). In the rules of logic, this would merely make one untintellible/dumb. But under the rules of morality, this would make one wrong/unacceptable.
Excellent. :grin:
That fits in perfectly with my current understanding. I have no objections.
Indeed. I like 'aptitude.' I also like 'know-how.' And it takes guts to expose yourself to criticism. There's also a sense of fair play. I meet strangers at basketball courts where I exercise. I am often impressed by and grateful for their manners. I think it's the same in intellectual conversation. People are fundamentally sure of themselves (but not of each of their ideas) are perhaps more able to do this. We let our theories do our dying for us, and we even invite one another to try to kill these theories. Or to express distaste or skepticism. As long the individuals treat one another as worthy of respect (independent of particular theories) this can work beautifully.
I agree. And one could argue that the deepest philosophy happens here, right at the edges. To be intelligible, one has to stay at least mostly within the current logical norm. But that norm is shifted over time. Our notion of the rational evolves. It's the same with morals. Those who are outright criminals won't be persuasive, but a non-violent hippy in the 60s was right on the edge.
Yes.
I would even take this a bit further and say that distinguishing between pre-linguistic thought/belief and linguistic thought/belief still isn't quite enough parsing. There also needs to be a distinction drawn between linguistic thought/belief that is not reflective, and linguistic thought/belief that is.
There's a need to establish existential dependency between different moral notions, such as all the ones heretofore discussed in addition to a few more perhaps. I think such a parsing is needed in order for our establishing a well-grounded evolutionary timeline. The timeline is needed to help parse which notions existentially predate others. That knowledge serves as ground for conclusions about origens.
But that is just not true.
I appreciate the overtly friendly discourse more than my words can probably convey. There's much to be agreed with regarding the bits about rules and social interactions.
There are two main premisses at work here for my part at least. One involves what all things moral have in common, and the other involves what all thought/belief have in common. While those two premisses can be used as premisses, they were not arrived at by virtue of assumption.
However, I'm always at a complete loss when others talk about and/or imply some foregone conclusion - some fait accompli - that we cannot get 'beneath' language. It's just not true. There's also a hint of discarding truth altogether and/or at least misunderstanding the irrevocable role that truth plays in all thought/belief and statements thereof.
We cannot get there(beneath language) if we continue employing historical frameworks which fail to draw and maintain the distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief.
Another is the notion and/or dichotomy of contingency/necessity that results from neglecting the aforementioned distinction. Then, we have all those other notions that have proved as little more than a waste of time and a lot of it(apriori, a posterior, analytic/synthetic, etc), because they are also based upon the same neglect.
The point here is that as long as one follows Zeno's framework, the hare never catches up to the rabbit. The historical frameworks of philosophy proper have not gotten human thought/belief correct. That's the problem writ large for those willing to admit it. There are no philosophers... ever... to have clearly and unequivocally drawn the distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief.
That's how this discussion began. It remains germane to the task at hand. That is particularly true of the current thought experiment and/or metacognitive endeavor of putting the distinction to good use.
Well put.
You are right, we've put in a lot of groundwork to validate our premise. That post was not meant to discount it.
I was merely expressing my opinion that no premise is fully immune to criticism. But that's a different topic for a different thread, so I will stop here.
I second that.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, that seems to be a good and even necessary distinction, which was at least implied, if not explicit, in an earlier post where I wrote:
Quoting Janus
So, we have the pre-reflective (but not pre-linguistic, obviously) context within which, and by virtue of which, later reflection upon that paradigm becomes possible.
Thanks!
That sounds right.
[quote=Hegel]
Philosophy first commences when a race for the most part has left its concrete life, when separation and change of class have begun, and the people approach toward their fall; when a gulf has arisen between inward strivings and external reality, and the old forms of Religion, &c., are no longer satisfying; when Mind manifests indifference to its living existence or rests unsatisfied therein, and moral life becomes dissolved. Then it is that Mind takes refuge in the clear space of thought to create for itself a kingdom of thought in opposition to the world of actuality, and Philosophy is the reconciliation following upon the destruction of that real world which thought has begun. When Philosophy with its abstractions paints grey in grey, the freshness and life of youth has gone, the reconciliation is not a reconciliation in the actual, but in the ideal world.
[/quote]
When does reflection become not only possible but necessary? When the old habits , commandments, and rituals stop working?... Once we have the abstract notion of morality, we are already 'evil.' To see our culture from the outside is maybe only possible for a sinner.
This is agreeable as well.
So we are playing around with three kinds of thought/belief. Prelinguistic, linguistic pre-reflective, and linguistic reflective.
What do they all have in common that makes them all thought/belief?
:smile:
They are all modes of assessment by which we make correlations/associations/connections.
Additionally, we find a social dynamic involved in the communication of each mode.
We're good. No problema.
While it is true that no premise is fully immune to criticism, it is also true that not all criticism is either valid or well-grounded. Some are neither. As you say, that's a different topic for a different thread.
Let's take a look. In order for the above to be true... One of the following would also have to be true...
1. Modes of assessment exist in their entirety prior to any and all thought/belief.
2. There is no difference between modes of assessment and thought/belief.
3. Thought/belief is one mode of assessment
Regarding 1...
Something that consists of something else cannot exist prior to that something else. All assessment consists of pre-existing thought/belief. Assessment cannot exist prior to all thought/belief. Hence, it only follows that not all thought/belief are modes of assessment.
Regarding 2 and 3...
The same answer.
Final conclusion...
I reject that answer and remain steadfast to what I've been arguing for thus far.
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I thought/believed that we'd already agreed to the universal criterion for what counts as thought/belief. I'll chalk it up to a pattern of mine. I tend to assume that the reader has already been through all the same veins of thought/belief and carried away the same understanding as I have.
Your welcome.
What is thought/belief in the first place? How are we defining it? It is impossible to determine what makes them common until we do this.
After reviewing earlier discussions, thought/belief was associated with meaning. But I never got to the point at which we specifically defined it.
I've no idea what you're saying here...
Quoting Janus
Strictly speaking, one need not be fully embedded in cultural mores and customs in order to question them. One can reasonably, rationally, sensibly, respectfully, and honourably question and/or negate some core tenet of a foreign worldview without previous assent. That said, in general, when talking about questioning one's own adopted worldview...
Yes. Totally. One must have one prior to calling it or parts of it into question.
We adopt a worldview replete with morality fully intact. That adoption process requires language use, as does the inculcation and conditioning aspects.
Expressing one's worldview prior to doubting it requires linguistic pre-reflective thought/belief. However, doubting it is reflective. It is to think about one's pre-existing thought/belief. One can question and remain steadfast. Not all thinking about thought/belief results in drastic change. Not all doubt ends in abandonment. Not all doubt ends in radical uncertainty.
All doubt is doubting the truth, the dependability, the veracity, and/or the reliability of something or other.
Questioning the morality within one's own worldview requires reflective linguistic thought/belief. That is to isolate particular kinds of thought/belief according to what they're about. All morality is about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. Questioning one's own morality is to question it's veracity, it's dependability, it's accuracy. Questioning one's own morality requires isolating one's own thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Language enables questioning.
Quoting creativesoul
Sure, with the knowledge and understanding that is enabled by language we can question whatever we want; the only prerequisite being that we do understand what we are questioning. We can't question a foreign worldview if we don't either speak the language or have access to translations that make it intelligible to us.
Language lends to abstract thought/belief - understanding. But understanding of what we are questioning is only necessary at the point which knowledge lacks, otherwise why would we question? Questioning implies a deficiency of knowledge. Ignorance is a very real thing, and ignorant thought/belief has no problem filling in the gaps, where it lacks knowledge (I'm absolutely certain I'm doing that here). Consider the foreign world view, it is not uncommon to see the ignoramus impose familiar cultural mores onto a foreign culture, even going so far as to deem an entire group evil based on zero knowledge of its culture, except that it is apparently alien. I only need to understand that Arabic or Islamic culture is different in order to judge it as evil...which I do, just kidding. :chin:
This is one example of the type of moral thought/belief called "judgement". Judgement does not require understanding, and, probably in most cases, involves a high degree of irrationality and ignorance.
I would be so bold as to venture: in judgement, where moral principles are applied, morality becomes most actual...it is where morality comes to a head.
Actually, thought/belief have been set out many times over here. While it's been mostly a snippet here and there, a few posts went into greater detail, and there have been quite a few dedicated to thought/belief and what they all consist in/of. There was what seemed to be some enthusiasm afterwards. There was not anything that resembled a rejection and/or objection by you. So, I assumed you'd agreed, I suppose, to all of the different snippets and subsequent delineations.
I entered into this discussion by noting a broad-based academic deficiency regarding the distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. This has been discussed more than once as well, without much in the way of objection/rejection.
What has not been set out is how we can arrive at a universal criterion for all thought/belief. As mentioned earlier, I looked towards thought/belief statements for starters...
All statements of thought/belief consists entirely of predication. All predication is correlation. Not all correlation is predication. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content, and is meaningful to the creature drawing the correlation/connection/association between the different things. All thought/belief consists entirely of correlations, connections, and/or associations drawn between different things. There are no examples to the contrary. That serves as a minimalist criterion with maximum scope.
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There's also a bit of clarity needed. has called me to task, and for good reason. We do not want to fall into anthropomorphism. We do not want to attribute human thought. belief, tendencies, and/or mental abilities to non-human animals. Avoiding anthropomorphism is and always has been a guiding principle and/or standard of mine.
However, at the same time, if thought/belief is amenable to evolution, then it must somehow exist in it's entirety prior to language acquisition/use in such a way that it can and does evolve into what we commonly call our own thought/belief. The alternative is to deny that non-linguistic creatures are capable of thinking/believing anything at all which is absurd on it's face, and would render language acquisition a process that does not require pre-existing thought/belief. As mentioned a few times heretofore, such a stance would have tremendous difficulty accounting for processes such as learning the names of things.
Yet, the potential to mistakenly attribute thought/belief that only humans are capable of to non human creatures remains quite high. That is particularly true if and when we do not have a good understanding of what all human thought/belief have in common that makes them what they are.
With the framework of thought/belief provided, we can and ought avoid anthropomorphism by virtue of carefully noting the content of the correlations(the thought/belief content). All thought/belief(correlational) content exists in it's entirety prior to becoming a part of the correlation. Here is where existential dependency plays a role as well. For example...
Morals are existentially dependent upon complex language acquisition and use replete with moral thought/belief that renders moral judgment(expresses consent/dissent regarding whether or not some thought, belief, and/or behaviour is acceptable). That is to perform comparative assessment between one's own morality and the behaviour in question. Thus, there can be no such correlations drawn by a creature devoid of morality. There is no prelinguistic moral judgment.
That's just a quick application of what I'm putting forth, and/or arguing for.
I understand that this seems at odds with no prelinguistic creature accepting and/or liking being harmed by another. Reconciliation seems needed.
Moral thought/belief does not require morality. Moral judgment does. Not all moral thought/belief is judgment. All moral judgment is moral thought/belief. All moral thought/belief is about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour...
Easy enough.
While there is an underlying sentiment that is agreeable here, I would suggest a starkly different accounting practice; one that avoids attributing agency to knowledge and ignorance.
You're right though to note that one can condemn another culture based upon inadequate and/or even outright false thought/belief about that culture.
I think that Janus was noting that prior to criticizing a foreign worldview, some understanding of that worldview must be had. Otherwise, the criticism is of something else.
So...
Are we all in agreement that morals are existentially dependent upon common language use and/or acquisition? All morals are existentially dependent upon language.
Culture is the source of morals.
Could you elaborate on the distinction/relation between predication and correlation?
Sure.
Predication is a linguistic practice which draws a meaningful correlation between something and what is said about that something. Typically the grammatical form of subject/predicate.
Not all correlation is linguistic.
Pavlov's dog and any number of other everyday examples bear witness to a language-less creature drawing correlations between different things. Note, I'm not agreeing with Pavlov's assessment or the convention at the time. The involuntary salivation shows expectation. Expectation is more than stimulus/response. The dog thought/believed that it was going to be fed.
I agree. And culture is a complex of many dynamics: prelinguistic, linguistic, individual, collective, learning and teaching.
Thanks. And, I agree.
Moral thought/belief obviously requires predication. Would you say all moral thought/belief is predication?
But...
I don't agree with that. Not all moral thought/belief requires predication. Moral judgment requires predication(language). I've been at pains to distinguish between moral judgment and moral thought/belief. I've just finished doing so - once again - here on this page. It's in the same post after the portion you responded to.
I might. How do you distinguish them?
Quoting creativesoul
It looks like you are saying all thought/belief is reducible to correlation including moral thought/belief, and that judgement is predicated on moral correlations.
Moral judgment. Not all judgment.
Ok, I'm understanding you better.
Quoting creativesoul
Prelinguistic correlation holds motivational significance. Accepting/liking is a complex impulse in prelinguistic thought/belief. It is probably associated with the autonomic processes of the limbic unit as externally modified by cultural factors (if it's a social animal in question). In this process, no conceptual meaning can be abstracted, and moral thought/belief requires abstract conceptualization that charges its correlations with a deeper motivational valence. Please correct me if I am off.
I think the below says it better...
Quoting creativesoul
However, those rudimentary moral thought/belief are inadequate for being morals. So, such prelinguistic likes/dislikes cannot be said to be the source of morals. Rather, they are better understood as necessary preconditions for the emergence of morals.
What would be some examples of codified moral thought/belief?
All morality. The written and/or spoken rules of acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. All governmental laws, etc.
Would you explain moral principles here?
Morality seems to require the communication of individually held thought/belief, and an agreement (perhaps a social contract) amongst morally conscious individuals. The social contract is only concrete if the individuals signed on have a sincere commitment, or allegiance to the conventional moral code.
How does moral judgement pertain to morality?
Sure.
Moral principles are moral thought/belief. The difference, I would presume, is that they are the thought arrived at via reflective and critical assessments(thinking about thought/belief). As a result, they are often more valued, and/or said to be a 'higher' kind of thought. I can both acknowledge and question that phraseology. Better understanding often requires more complex reflective thought(higher thought). However, being a result of thinking about thought/belief(being a higher kind of thought) does not always equal better understanding.
One can rationalize nearly any behaviour one wants to, including genocide. Such rationalization is always more complex thought.
Since morality is the rules of acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour and rules are existentially dependent upon language, then so too is morality. Communication results from successful language use. However, there is nothing to stop certain circumstances from arising in which there's not much of an agreement between those governed by the rules, and those writing and/or otherwise determining/establishing the rules.
The signing of an agreement is concrete enough proof of all parties consenting to the terms within. Although, cases can and ought be made against deliberate deception underlying some contracts/agreements.
If one signs on insincerely, they are still liable/responsible for keeping to the terms of the agreement.
Moral judgment is what happens when one expresses approval/disapproval of some thought, belief, and/or behaviour. If one claims that some thought, belief, and/or behaviour is acceptable, s/he can do so using a multitude of different terms all rendering the same judgment. The candidate under our judgment is rendered either acceptable or not, good or not, moral or not(in prescriptive/proscriptive language)etc.
Typically, moral judgment is universally applicable regardless of the individual actor/agent. That is implicit in much of the historical talk of and/or about moral judgment. When something is unacceptable(morally wrong) in some situation or other, it is unacceptable regardless of the individual in the situation. If smacking a defenseless old lady in the back of a head with a shovel is wrong/immoral/bad/evil and/or otherwise unacceptable in any other terms, it is so despite who wields the shovel.
To directly answer the question with the above in mind...
Moral judgment is to condone and/or condemn, assent and/or dissent, approve and/or disapprove. It is to call something "good" or "bad", or any other number of ways to say that something is acceptable/unacceptable. The point is that moral judgment takes comparison to a moral standard. Early on, standards are the adopted morality acquired via common language use. Language acquisition and use has morality intact as the standard.
Moral judgment is existentially dependent upon morality.
Ah, I see. That's much easier to understand. Yes. Questioning a worldview is existentially dependent upon language acquisition/use.
Quoting Janus
I would concur. We could think/believe that we are questioning a foreign worldview, and be mistaken. We would be questioning our own preconceived notions thereof. Without some knowledge of the foreign worldview, our critiques would be of something other than the worldview.
We question not only as a means to acquire knowledge, but also as a method of rejection/denial. Some questioning of another statement is doubting that the statement is true. Some questioning of another worldview is questioning whether or not it is worth following. Such questioning can be based upon knowledge.
Thanks for those responses. I think you are onto something. I have more responses coming...
Quoting creativesoul
Wouldn't the question of something's worth be due to a lack of knowledge regarding its worthiness? Questioning of a thing's worth is only necessary at the point which knowledge of its worthiness is lacking, otherwise why would we question it?
The only question in which the answer is fully known (that I can think of) would be the rhetorical kind, as is done in teaching.
I don't know. Let us take that consideration a bit further. Perhaps an otherwise unknown answer reveals itself, and becomes known.
What is something worth?<-------------that is the question of something's worth.
This question can be asked by those who know little, those who know much, and those who are somewhere between those two extremes. Questioning the worth of something doesn't indicate a lack of knowledge of the thing's worth.
Hopefully we need not have to remind ourselves of our own fallibility. Omniscience isn't required for knowledge about something. Unattainable standards are untenable.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
That's one reason why one could be asking about a thing's worth. It's not the only reason.
One can have knowledge of a thing's worth. One can talk about the thing and it's worth in great detail. One can use that knowledge to question the worth placed upon the same thing by another worldview.
Comparative value assessment.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I'm more of an optimist, I suppose. There is this hint of fatalism about your writing.
Some answers are fully known. Depends upon the question. Aren't those worth more?
This has been an interesting river of thought.
Well, after all, I am Merkwurdichliebe. :wink:
I guess I'm only regarding "questioning" in terms of its functionality. Yet, I suppose there are much more significance ways of regarding questioning.
Well stated.
I have the suspicion that moral thought/belief is of a kind that has a high degree of irrationality. Or put another way, for every moral reason, there is always an opposite/contradictory reason. This is in contrast to say mathematical/logical reason that has a strict criterion and little room for dissention.
Moral thought/belief permits for a greater range of reasoning, and because of that it sprawls into an indeterminate irrationality.
It is a higher kind of thought/belief because it involves a more complex form of abstract speculation. It is not a supremely useful or efficient mode of thought/belief, but it is highly concerned with consequence, which has deep psychological significance -
qua. redemption/damnation. There is something much more personal about consciously doing right/wrong, than say building an engine/system. Doing right by building an engine/system would be supremely personal. I might be off here, but I'm just exploring the connotations.
When two parties commit to opposing ethical principles, responsibility clashes. So we must account for the infiltration and subversion of alien morals within a culture defined by a heavily enforced morality. There is outright disregard for accepted rules, immorality. But conscientious moral dissention seems to view the established cultural mores as outmoded and decadent, in contrast to the moral right that it represents.
Moral reasoning often includes both mathematical and logical reasoning.
All can be mistaken. History shows this.
Not sure about that logical train...
All thought/belief that exists in it's entirety prior to it's being taken into consideration by the thinking/believing creature is irrational. All pre-reflective thought/belief is irrational.
Some is well-grounded and true.
Because of that, we can know that not all irrational thought/belief are on equal ground. They are certainly not all prone to the same mistakes. I'm assuming 'indeterminate irrationality' has negative connotation. It's being invoked as though It's not something we ought aspire towards, but... avoid.
I find it unwise to avoid well-grounded true belief. Given the choice between being extremely rational, well argued for, and false on the one hand and being irrational, well-grounded, and true on the other...
Given that choice, I'm erring on the side of well-grounded and true each and every time.
Again...
Not sure about this logical train...
Some complex forms of abstract speculation are false. Some simple moral thought/belief are true.
Which is more valuable here?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
When doing what's right is an operative guiding principle of one's behaviour, it becomes causal in it's affects on the agent, and their effects on the world.
I agree that aiming to do what's right has visceral affects/effects. I agree that some people driven by moral thought/belief are driven by thought/belief that has been taken upon and perpetuated by pure faith alone. I agree that some of these people are irrational, because they themselves cannot offer a reason, or an academically accepted line of reasoning to support the confidence, certainty, and/or conviction that accompanies their belief statements.
I disagree with covert implications that one ought disregard and/or dissent from a statement spoken by one who cannot argue well for it, simply because they cannot argue well for it.
We'll see.