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)
That explanation would be biological and evolutionary, I would think. That's more a question of science than philosophy.
Analyzing your comments, it concludes that our experiences revolve around our moral objectivity. I think otherwise, because if it were to be by experience, then our moral ontology would be all subjective. There would be no objective morality.
For example, if the Nazis succeeded in developing a universal basis on morality, then that would be seen as moral objectivity. The universalizing process affects our moral decisiveness, through experience. Our moral actions would then be basing on Nazi principle — The Nazi moral system would be identified universally as moral good, and obviously, that's not the case. But that does not imply it's objective. Thus;
Quoting hachit
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Quoting hachit
I believe our human moral ontology and moral grounds, as a theist, would be from God.
I find it useful to revert to the use of the terms “ethic” and “moral” where the ethical problem is culmination of individual moral attitudes.
An example fo the naturalistic fallacy. That we do, does not imply that we ought.
No, it doesn't. I wouldn't call that moral objectivity, anyway, because that would just be confusing.
Quoting SethRy
Yes, that's right. It is by our experience that we judge right and wrong. It is subjective. It is what we, the subjects, do based on our moral feelings. We often feel differently and judge moral matters differently, hence the need for ethics. But there's no correct and incorrect in the sense that there's a correct and incorrect in a disagreement over whether one plus one equals two. That's the mistake that many people make.
The answer to why we experience these feelings is one giant step removed from meta-ethics, which is already one step removed from ethics. It's just science, like I said.
Quoting SethRy
Fine, as long as you recognise that that's not philosophy. Well, unless you can pull something reasonable out of the hat. Otherwise it's just like saying something like, "I believe babies come from storks".
You're a really bad listener. After 60+ pages of discussion where I explained my position over and over again, you still waste time making a fool of yourself by attacking a straw man.
You truly do live up to your name, Tim nice but dim. Well, the latter half of it, at least.
Nah! We don't start thinking about the need to continue our species' existence until long after we've either done our share of reproducing (or we let somebody else do our share). What people feel is sex hunger. That takes care of continuing our species--and most other species too What keeps the species going is the "Boy, I'd like to fuck her!" reaction.
Quoting hachit
Nah! This is all after the fact. Long after the fact. This is theory about what we observe or think we observed.
Quoting hachit
Nah! Most of us do not have the opportunity to use morality spreaders on others. (They look just like manure spreaders. And sometimes it's the same old bullshit.)
Morality arises out of intimate human interaction. Our first intimate human interaction is child/parent. Parents all have the problem of training their children to behave the way they want them to behave. Good behavior is praised; bad behavior is punished. The child figures out what is good and bad. As the child gets older, he learns the prevailing morality that his parents follow. Later on, the child -- now a philosophy major at University -- decides to rip up everything he knows about morality and starts thinking it through. Almost always he will conclude with what he started with, but if he goes and stays very far afield in his moral thinking, he may be deemed a complete asshole. Sometimes people get lost while they are far afield and end up here.
Alas.
People love each other and love becomes a standard of morality. We want to feel all warm and fuzzy about ourselves, and about a few other people. Not too many, though. We can feel warm and fuzzy about being nice to a few people; feeling warm and fuzzy about being nice to millions of people is impossible. Even Jesus felt warm and fuzzy about... oh, maybe a couple dozen. Par for the course. 11 of the 12, his mother of course; his dad; Lasarus; John, for sure. Probably not Judas, given the way things worked out.
It's a circular process. It starts in the home; society shapes behavior in various ways. People fall in love and start another round. The parents want their children to behave so it isn't quite such a nightmare having them around.
So we have innate dispositions to be okay with some interactive behavior and not be okay with other interactive behavior. Evolution doesn't work so as to produce a bunch of clones in this regard. But there are some broad things that are far more common than not.
At any rate, the answer is that it's just a way that your brain works.
Oh yes. The magical limbic system explains it all
That doesn't explain, for instance, how some people can be pro-life and others pro-choice. There must be some "mysterious extra-mental phenomenon," at work too.
"Evolution doesn't work so as to produce a bunch of clones in this regard."
Exactly.
Quoting praxis
No, that doesn't follow, unless you add some false premise along the lines of what Terrapin has said or what I suspect would be some other unfounded notion. I suppose if you want to explore this further, present a full valid argument, rather than one with one or more missing premises, so we don't have to guess your reasoning.
The 'mysterious extra-mental phenomenon' in the specific case that I mentioned involves concepts such as liberty (freedom to choose), and I guess the sacred (sacredness of human life). Though our moral intuitions may start out relatively the same, the culture we grow up in imbues us with concepts and divergent moral frameworks, like conservatism or liberalism.
Our ability to cooperate on a large scale is more dependent on our ability to form and share concepts like liberty and sacredness than it is to inherent moral intuitions. Can any other species of mammal, for example, cooperate on the scale that we can? No, and what do we have to thank or curse for that? Mysterious extra-mental phenomenon.
Extramental concepts?
No, that's not an explanation about the source of morality at all, that's just bringing up something which you judge to be good, namely liberty, and making a value judgement about human life, namely that it's sacred. That's a complete confusion of the subject matter. We're not supposed to be doing that. The opening post made that clear.
That people have a variety of different ethical or political stances, whether influenced by the community or otherwise, ultimately stems back to human biology. Just what exactly do you think [i]it is[/I] that's being influenced? It is us, and that obviously has to do with our brains, especially the limbic system which significantly relates to emotion.
Explanations one, two, or ten steps away from the source of morality aren't particularly helpful. Nor is an explanation about, for example, what our ability to cooperate on a large scale depends upon, because you'd just be talking about something else. You think it's good to cooperate, so you're going off topic to explain why humans cooperate? But why? And obviously I acknowledge things like evolution and our planet and a whole bunch of other things that aren't mental phenomena, but that's getting at an explanation of an explanation. Like I said, that's just doing something like science or metaphysics. It's not close enough to morality to be as relevant as the kind of explanation that myself and Terrapin are presenting. Morality is about right and wrong, which is about our emotions, otherwise right and wrong are meaningless. Our emotions, in turn, have an explanation in terms of our biology, and our brains in particular, and the limbic system in particular. Of course, you could go off track in all kind of ways about why this is. You could talk about cosmology or physics or chemistry. If our planet didn't orbit the sun, we couldn't judge right from wrong. Is that the source of morality? No.
I began by showing the inadequacy of your explanation which, to reiterate, is its inability to account for divergent moral frameworks.
But you haven't actually done that, you just think you have. There is nothing whatsoever in my explanation which can't account for divergent moral frameworks. That's just your misunderstanding based on some faulty assumptions you have about my position. It's illogical to reason that my explanation doesn't account for what you say it doesn't, just because I don't grant your tangent about liberty, the sacredness of life, cooperation, etc.
You haven't even [i]begun[/I] to argue against me, logically speaking. But at least you have Tim for company.
Correct like I, said I, I believe we start with that then make our own. I consider into my thesis that we may reject " the need to continue our species existence." in the future.
Also ought implys "should", and as in my first statement "I'm not asking for what is right or wrong".
Some people here have real difficulty with that one. We've already had mention of liberty, the sacredness of life, cooperation, and murder. In another discussion, a harmonious community kept being mentioned.
Now, I wonder what these things have in common...
The answer is that they're all examples of things judged to be good or bad. And these are moral judgements founded in emotion. That's what our conscience is for, it is our sense of right and wrong. That comes from emotion, which comes from our brain, and the study of the brain is neuroscience, so that's what you need to know about to know in detail about this stuff. One can learn through a quick google search that the limbic system significantly relates to emotion.
I focus on emotion because it is the fundamental connection to morality, to what's right and wrong. And what's right and wrong only makes sense in relation to our moral judgement. Reason is just a tool to order thought, and it is driven in ethical matters by our emotions first and foremost. Reason alone can't make morality what it is. Emotionless robots aren't moral agents. They wouldn't truly be able to understand morality or make moral judgements.
Reason has pride of place in logic, where emotions have no place. But with ethics, reason is but a slave to the passions. Ethics is very much a matter of emotion. If you don't appeal to emotion in ethics, then you're doing it wrong.
Suppose that all our “dos” are driven by “wants” … this including our doing of reasoning: since wants are emotive, as per Hume, reasoning is foundationally driven by underlying desires. Further suppose that our wants are in search of a resolution to that wanted. Reasoning, then, is arguably an optimal means of discovering how to best obtain and thereby satisfy our wants.
Given any degree of realism (here not confused with physicalism), there will then be constraints to how these wants can obtain their sought after aim of resolution. These constraints will then—in some way or another—(pre)determine which actions can factually satisfy our wants and which actions (though intending to so satisfy) cannot.
Those behaviors that factually satisfy our wants will then be logically correct means of so satisfying. They will be the right behaviors for us. And, since what we want is for our wants to be satisfied, right behaviors will constitute good, beneficial, behaviors for us. That aim, whatever it might be, that satisfies all our wants will then be conceptualized by us as complete good: “the Good” as Plato worded it.
And vice versa: all our intentions and subsequent acts to satisfy our wants that are fallaciously conceived to so satisfy our wants will then be wrong behaviors to engage in—for they always lead to frustrated wants and, in due measure, suffering. They will be deemed to be bad behaviors by us for this very reason.
To the same degree that there occur universal and fundamental wants among all humans (or mammals, or life in general), there will then also logically result aims that are universally good to that cohort considered. Being universally good, these aims will hold existential presence in manners that are impartial to the (sometimes fallacious/wrong) intentions of individual beings to satisfy their wants. In this sense, then, this universally good aim (or maybe aims) shall then, by certain definitions, be validly labeled that which is objectively good.
Within this general train of thought, then, subjective want-driven good entails there being some objective good—which can be expressed as “that end which satisfies all wants”—that, whether or not obtainable within our current lifetime in complete form, is nevertheless pursued by all subjective beings.
Discerning what this objective good is can itself be a fallacy of reasoning (a wrong/bad appraisal) or a discovery of what is in fact true (a right/good appraisal). Disparity between discernments of what is objectively good then leads to divergent ethical norms—as well as to, at times, what are labeled acts of evil by the society at large.
***This hypothesis is to illustrate that there is no entailed logical contradiction between subjective good/bad and objective good/bad.
As to Hume’s dilemma when looked at from this offered vantage: figure out what the logically and factually correct aim is that satisfies your wants (this factually correct aim being an “is) and then you logically derive what should be done to get there (this being an “ought”) … thereby deriving ought from is.
So, here, good and bad are determined by wants which naturally entail their own resolution as aim/goal--and this within the constraints of some form of realism.
I guess we’ll never know your accounting. :sad:
No, speak for yourself. Others are probably capable enough not to be struggling with the problem in understanding that you're having, and I've explained that this problem of yours is due to your own misunderstanding of what my explanation does and doesn't do.
I've already said it as simply and as clearly as possible: "we often feel differently and judge moral matters differently". And then I've explained that this can be explained through neuroscience. The only problem here would be if you were to weirdly assume that we all have identical brains which work in identical ways in the same sort of circumstances, which is so obviously false that it is hardly worth dealing with, and yet I'm generously wasting my own valuable time in doing so, only for you to respond with comments like the above, which just reinforce your own misunderstanding without really lifting a finger to help yourself.
Why don't you just apply some common sense and use the internet to educate yourself? Why don't you just not make a frankly silly assumption, like that we're all clones, and then try to push the faux-problem of explaining why we're not onto me?
Ethical orientations aren't a matter of taste. They are based on deep convictions. The ethical arises from an assumption on how the world appears to the individual, how he believes the world should be, and finally with a judgement upon himself regarding whether he is conformed to the world as it appears, or as it should be. This process isn't so trivial and fleeting as say, being horny.
Why do people do this? Seriously? What is this? Preaching to the choir or straw man?
It's called the philosophy forums. Don't be so agitated.
It's not plural.
And that doesn't answer any of my questions. If you're suggesting that preaching to the choir and straw men are just part of doing philosophy, then yes, unfortunately so, but it's not good philosophy, is it?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Then submit better replies. If I seem agitated, that usually means that you're doing something wrong.
:sad: no
Long term > Short term
So Right is what is optimal for the long term (exercise, healthy diet, helping others)
Wrong is what is optimal for the short term (sweets, laziness, harming others)
I'd like to propose a different sort of silliness. Imagine, if you will, someone cloning you and then placing the cloned baby S into a very different culture than the one you grew up in. Cloned baby S would adopt whatever conceptual order or abstract principles, or whatever mysterious extra-mental phenomenon that exists in that culture. Let's say for the example that the culture is cannibalistic. Let's also assume for the example that you're not a cannibal and believe that cannibalism is immoral, if only marginally. Both you and cloned baby S started out with practically the same neurology or limbic system, yet cloned baby S is cool with eating people and you, we assume, find it immoral.
Essentially the same physiology yet two very different moral frameworks. Clearly, it is inadequate to say that the mind or limbic system is the source of morals because it cannot account for vast differences in moral frameworks. Saying "we often feel differently and judge moral matters differently" isn't explaining or accounting for the differences.
Cannibalism has consequences. The culture that is cannibalistic is doing the wrong thing so would be shunned and punished by other cultures. So in effect the same moral framework applies to both cultures - cannibals are punished. Hence cannibalism is not popular.
So pressure from the peer group - in this case other cultures - ensures that we have a communally shared sense of right and wrong.
None of that negates the fact that lil cloned baby S would love eating people. Perhaps with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
In the long term, S and his cannibalistic culture would likely be punished - again characteristic of a wrong decision.
Long term > short term so the right decision is not to eat people (to avoid punishment in the long term).
Great point.
It seems as if you're unaware that people in the same family, including twins, even, can and often do have completely different moral views.
It seems as if you're unaware that moral views in the same culture can vary. And "completely different" in the culture that I've lived in would include something like cannibalism, so I suppose you don't mean all that different.
People in the same family, who interact with the same adults, go to the same school, have the same teachers, have many of the same friends, listen to the same music, watch the same movies, etc. can have very different moral views, and yes, those views can include things like "Cannibalism is/isn't okay"
I can reiterate also. Cultures, particularly in the Information Age, can accommodate a range of moral views and values. Even so, this range is limited to known concepts. You can’t know or adopt a view that doesn’t exist in your culture.
There is also norms. A psychopath, for example, may have abhorrent (to their culture) moral views but can nevertheless function well in society because they know and understand moral norms, even though they’re not emotionally effected by them.
It’s possible that my brother could have been a psychopath who enjoys cannibalism but he would still know that it’s immoral in our society, and he would be an anomaly.
How are we getting a range in the example I'm explaining?
With the exchange of information.
Maybe rephrasing the question would result in a more satisfying answer.
What exchange of information?
I think you can safely jump to the point.
This is the point; at the moment at least. What exchange of information?
An alternative approach:
In my view, we start life with the need to increase awareness, interconnectedness and overall development and achievement.
This alternative path of evolution leads to developing the most detailed picture of a relation to the environment, including what combinations of stimuli (experiences) are preferred - what the various systems of the organism are drawn to. This has lead to recognition of diverse preferences, and then to developing a system of value so that preferences can be arranged into some sort of hierarchy according to what becomes a constructed idea of ‘self’.
The problem is that this ‘self’ has different priorities to the ‘overall’ development and achievement to which all matter is inherently oriented (IMO). This conflict rapidly develops into a battle between the ‘self’ and its environment (or God) for dominance/authority, and our experience of suffering begins.
We are taught that we need to continue our species’ existence - it is NOT inherent, but a fearful denial that fights to maintain ‘self’ as the apparent priority, based on preferences observed within the organism that are determined from a very limited awareness of the universe.
Our morality is a dialectic between what the ‘self’ prefers and what our current awareness of (and interconnection with) the universe informs us about this ‘overall’ development and achievement we should be working towards.
The more we interconnect with other experiences of a similar morality - and attack, deny or oppress instances of diverging morality - the stronger our apparent position. The more we interconnect openly with a diverse morality with a view to increasing awareness, the more our own morality will broaden to reflect a commitment to development and achievement on a more universal scale.
But it comes with experiences of pain, humiliation and loss to the physical, genetic, social, cultural and ideological ‘self’...
So then obviously they would have two very different experiences.
Quoting praxis
Yes, obviously. And their brains would most probably respond in different ways in response to this. They would react with different emotions.
Quoting praxis
Would you just give up trying to distort my meaning in an attempt to refute what I said? It won't work. Of course there'd be external factors which influence our moral judgement. I never denied this. Why would you think that I was suggesting that our brains don't respond to external stimuli?
The most usual definition of 'our community' might be the human race - we do things that are morally acceptable to the human race.
Vegetarians might define there community to include animals as well as humans - they do things that are acceptable to animals and humans.
Your idea is good but when I use this Idea
I run into the problem were the first learn it from, after all life seems pointless in the light of reason alone. Sure people my say we learn it from a deity but some of them (if they were really) don't seem to care about human life.
Then explain how some people develop new moral on there own, because if you are correct morals set and no new ones can be created.
it also makes some human actions unexplained specific the rise of atheism because theism for the longest time was a crime.
Our morals stem from biological emotional feedback that has its roots in how we function as pack animals. If you want the most basic causality start for our sense of morality, there it is.
From that, because we are intelligent enough to analyze our own perception of the world, we conceptualize our emotional response to actions and relations into models of principles.
These models are the foundation for moral theories and moral guidelines.
Since people have different experiences, different emotions, personality types, etc. different models are in conflict with each other, raising moral ideal conflicts. These conflicts can be between individuals or groups which have organized models for the group. I.e individual morals and doctrine morals.
The morals that we sense to be basic, like "don't kill each other" basically stem from the emotional care of the group. It's easy to corrupt by putting the care for the group against the invasion of another group, meaning war with another group, killing the other group can be justified to be morally good because it's morally good to care for the group you defend.
That's why ethics is a hard topic since it's easily corrupted by the context it exists under. I do, however, propose there to be a way of inducing a set of basic morals by examining humanity as a species. It's when we examine morals while corrupting the examination with our own personal morals, that we fail to explain morality in any rational way. And if we examine morals while corrupted by institutionalized moral values, we are essentially limited in our thinking to that of a puppet of that institution.
I think morality could evolve as your community or sense of community evolves. I already mentioned the example of vegetarianism - including animals in your definition of community changes your morality.
Developing morals on their own... people learn with time. Specifically, they learn that long term > short term so what right is what is right in the long term (not short term). So typically it takes willpower to make a right decision because you sacrifice the short term for the long term. So willpower is another variable that could change causing someones morality to change.
Quoting Christoffer
Many problems in society seem to stem from an inappropriate definition of the group/community. For example, regarding the group as 'your country' rather than 'the human race' tends to lead to conflicts of interest and war. Leaving animals out of the group, leads to ill-treatment of animals. Etc...
Yes, but this was about the source of morals. The source is emotional, vegetarians evolve morals based on their emotional feedback towards other animals. They also view killing animals for food to be morally wrong. Some of them, extremists, might even kill other people in a way they feel is morally good because they killed someone that kills animals. Morals are easily corrupted if not examined and understood.
Quoting Devans99
Willpower is irrelevant if a deep understanding of human psychology and biology as roots for moral values are ignored. Deep understanding of ethics is required before willpower to act upon such balanced moral values.
Quoting Devans99
In order to find a balanced moral, people need to exclude any idea of "group", since thinking in terms of groups limits the causal concepts of moral choices. I.e however you choose a group as a framework for moral choices, it excludes something else. If we think about our planet and all life on earth we might exclude other life in the universe. This is why it's complicated as thinking "too big" locks any morals into unknowns.
It might be that the most moral way to induce good values is to include most groups as possible and that in itself is a morally responsible way of thinking. That there is morality to how we should think about morality, not just the moral choice and act itself.
Doing the right thing takes willpower because the right thing is often painful in the short term. Exercise, eating healthy, helping others are examples. Contrast with eating sweets - the wrong thing to - is attractive to people of low willpower - because it is short term pleasure in exchange for long term pain.
Quoting Christoffer
I think perfecting your morals includes adopting a definition of group as 'all sentient life' - leading to respect for all sentient life.
Completely agree that long term is harder, but often tend to focus on a morally better outcome. However, inducing what is morally good or bad in the long term is still what is problematic and needs a method.
Quoting Devans99
Agreed, but within this group, how do you solve the trolley problem? As an example? Moral dilemmas need a method that includes the complexity of many different situations.
I think its based on pain and pleasure:
- Completely right is maximum pleasure and minimum pain for the individual and group.
- Completely wrong is minimum pleasure and maximum pain for the individual and group.
So we look for MAX(Pleasure-Pain) as a solution for any moral problem. So in the trolley problem, we kill 1 person rather than 5.
Where there are conflicts of interest between individuals and the group, peer pressure within the group should ensure the group wins out over the individual.
Have you read the moral theories I posted before? It's basically based on this value calculus :wink:
Quoting Devans99
But if we think long term, how do we know that the one person killed isn't the causal start of something that leads to a cure for cancer? That person's child or they themselves might solve such a cure in the future, meaning that if you kill 5 to save 1, you save more in the long term. This is why the trolley problem becomes problematic. You can apply the mathematical probability that 5 people equals both more good in the present over 1 person killed and that there might be a larger probability that one of those five will cure cancer or be the casual continuation towards it. However, it is not a certainty.
That's why probability needs to be included if we ought to define what is of most morally positive value to that choice. It might be worse to kill 5 to save 1 because we think that the one person will cure cancer because the probability is higher that saving 5 will lead to that outcome instead. Therefore it's morally responsible to do so, based on the probability of max pleasure, not what is currently so.
Is this a joke? Did you not read what he just said?
I don't think I encountered them. You have a link?
Quoting Christoffer
I guess to make a perfect moral judgement, you must first be in possession of all the facts. So you would know precisely who is likely or not likely to cure cancer and at what probability.
Then with all the facts, you'd proceed to make a right decision by maximising pleasure and minimising pain over the long term (even if that means pain in the short term) for the group (the human race in the case of cancer). So if the 1 guy is going to cure cancer, your calculation would lead you to kill 5.
I believe our sense of right and wrong come from the need to maximise pleasure and minimise pain both as individuals but more importantly, across a group/community.
Long term > Short term, so our sense of right and wrong come from an appreciation of what is right and wrong in the long term.
No, it's not a great point at all. It's just an ignorant denial.
So, you don't think that a person growing up in a cannibalistic culture, and a person growing up in our culture, would have any impact on our emotions regarding cannibalism? The clone example doesn't make any difference, because the conclusion is the same: they'd react with different emotions, meaning that their limbic systems would be operating in different ways. The suggestion that clones growing up in starkly different environments would have the same moral judgements is uninformed and illogical. That's the assumption that his argument is based on. It is not an assumption that I have made, and nothing in my argument implies it. He is missing the mark by a country mile.
Well it doesn't. The pleasure machine thought experiment refutes that.
Yes, and my brother and I are living proof of that. He hasn't thought this through properly at all.
Interesting.
[i]"Nozick provides us with three reasons not to plug into the machine.
1. We want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them - "It is only because we first want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them." (Nozick, 43)
2. We want to be a certain sort of person - "Someone floating in a tank is an indeterminate blob." (Nozick, 43)
3. Plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality (it limits us to what we can make). "There is no actual contact with any deeper reality, though the experience of it can be simulated.""[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine
I would argue that if any of the above 3 hold, then it is more pleasurable for us to be outside the pleasure machine. Pleasure comes in many ways; for example, it could be our role in society that we take pleasure from and that pleasure would be lost by plugging in.
They're only examples of things you judge to be good, and that's clearly not the topic.
But the pleasure machine cannot maximise pleasure because it cannot give me a role in society which I value above all.
So the thought experiment is contradictory.
Ok, then, I'll give you a chance to convince me. Tell me, how does the limbic system directly and immediately cause the emotional experience of love.
My prediction, you will completely dodge the question like you do every time.
Sure, life seems pointless now that the light of reason doesn’t have ‘God’ to dialogue with anymore. But for thousands of years it was perfectly reasonable to insist on our God-given right or purpose to populate the earth and have dominion over its inhabitants. At least, that’s what we convinced ourselves, because the alternative was to accept that human life was never the priority.
Darwin might have taken ‘God’ out of the picture, but he maintained that we were compelled to pursue our own existence as a priority, just like every other animal. This is what evolutionary theory teaches.
But our experience (if we pay careful attention) tells us that the ‘self’ is not the priority. And so the dialectic continues...
No, the pleasure machine isn't contradictory. Once again, the pleasure machine is machine which gives maximum pleasure. If you're talking about a machine which doesn't do this, then you're talking about something else.
My prediction is that you will mistake a reasonable objection to the wording or logical relevance of the question as a "dodge".
You seem to have pulled that question out of thin air, so you must first explain how it is of logical relevance to what I've actually said. You don't get to just make up a position and act like I'm responsible for justifying it. Here's a tip: don't try to put what you think my position is in your own words, because you've proven incompetent at doing so accurately. Stick to my wording.
And you must also accept that I'm not a neuroscientist.
And also, you're a hypocrite, because you dodged my question and the related points which followed.
If you're only accepting blueprint answers, where's your alternate blueprint answer?
I’m not refuting it, I’ve only repeatedly pointed out its inadequacy.
The source of morals is both nature and nurture.
You mean you've repeatedly asserted that without properly responding to my criticism.
If anyone refuses to get it, then it cannot be maximising their pleasure. For example, the machine would have to give the occupant the illusion that they are a successful member of society, rather than strapped into a pleasure machine. Then everyone would get in and the objections raised by the thought experiment are not applicable.
Most of your criticisms have little to do with the subject so I have no interest in responding to them, properly or otherwise.
You haven't a clue, so suit yourself.
I missed where you property responded to the following, btw.
Quoting praxis
Yes, that's obvious, and is of no logical relevance, so I don't know why you're saying that.
Quoting Devans99
That's astoundingly ignorant. You've asked everyone in the world about this, and they've all answered in the affirmative?
Then pay closer attention. I don't see why I should repeat myself. Just go back and [i]properly[/I] address what I've said about that.
If it was going to give someone everything you could possibly want then we can say only stupid people making the wrong decision would get not get in.
So pleasure/pain (in all its emotional/physical guises) really is all there is to happiness for right thinking people.
Nurture influences, but can't provide morals.
x influencing y is different than x being identical to y.
Lots of people wouldn't want to be strapped into a pleasure machine, because they value reality over maximum pleasure. That doesn't make them stupid people making the wrong decision, and it doesn't make the rest right thinking people. But that argument does indicate your own stupidity.
Valuing reality is a form of pleasure. If the pleasure machine cannot give that then the pleasure machine is not working according to specification.
No it isn't. And even if it was, that would be irrelevant.
Quoting Devans99
No, the pleasure machine just needs to give maximum pleasure. Do you understand what maximum pleasure is? Because you don't seem to.
It is a form of pleasure else people would not be inclined towards doing it; we do things that are pleasurable to us (in the widest possible sense).
And the pleasure machine needs to replicate this form of pleasure else its not doing its job.
Then everyone excepting the very stupid would get in.
No, you can call it a form of pleasure as many times as you like, but that won't make it true. People value things because they see them as being of worth or benefit. Whether that gives them pleasure is beside the point.
Quoting Devans99
You don't understand what it needs to do to be doing its job. You don't understand what maximum pleasure means.
Quoting Devans99
You are very stupid to think that.
'People value things because they see them as being of worth or benefit' - IE they get some form of pleasure from them.
How come you get everything wrong? It's especially galling as you always assume you have everything right :(
No, not in other words. That's not an acceptable use of that abbreviation. This isn't the first time that you've made that mistake, either.
Also, how come you get everything wrong? It's especially galling as you always assume you have everything right.
I give up on this conversation :(
It's probably for the best for you give to up on this conversion if you're just going to repeat your rigid and narrow-minded stance over and over again without addressing any of the underlying problems. You're known for doing this. Doesn't that reputation bother you?
You can review what does. So are you going to do so or not? Do you derive pleasure from dancing around the issue?
Of course it provides morals. You wouldn’t have a life at all, much less a moral life, without nurturing.
Going back to the cloned baby S scenario, the cloned S would have no choice in what moral order was imparted to him. Depending on the culture, it might impart an order where cannibalism is acceptable or an order where it’s not.
x ? morals
y ? morals
x + y = morals
I’m interested in your response to what I wrote.
I don't believe you, because you aren't doing anything about that, except try to manipulate me. And I have little toleration for that. If you're interested, then help yourself. You don't need me for that. You just need to put more effort in.
Of course it doesn't. How can something be a moral stance when there's not even any disposition towards allowing versus not allowing some behavior?
You mean "projection". Another highly amusing example of your lack of attention.
It's a complete myth that, in that scenario, my clone couldn't reach a different judgement about cannibalism than that of his culture.
Again, I’ve not denied disposition. I’ve pointed out that disposition is inadequate to account for the plurality of moral frameworks. Can you or S do that?
And is there a natural disposition towards something like religious celibacy? If not, then how can it exist?
Conversely, are you a cannibal or do you have the potential to be someone who genuinely feels that cannibalism is not immoral, and can happily munch away?
Here was what I claimed that you disagreed with. Nurture doesn't actually provide moral stances in any sense, because we don't actually have dispositions for or against any behavior in the "nurture" versus "nature" world. To disagree with that, you can't backpeddle to focusing on social influence again. The disagreement isn't over social influence. The disagreement is over whether you can literally receive moral stances socially. x influencing y doesn't amount to x being identical to y.
I'm still waiting for you to address what I've actually said, and to properly respond to my criticism. Why can't this be explained through biology, of which evolution and neuroscience are a part?
Quoting praxis
Using the term "natural" just opens up a can of worms. It doesn't seem helpful.
Quoting praxis
However I answer that question, I don't think that it would demonstrate anything of logical relevance to your line of argument. The dots don't connect.
I wouldn’t have disagreed with something that I can’t determine the meaning of.
Okay, then let's make sure we understand what the other person is claiming before we agree or disagree.
What part of what you quoted are you unsure about?
You could start with the meaning of this part:
Sure, so earlier you brought up the nature/nurture distinction. ("The source of morals is both nature and nurture.") We're talking about biology and social interaction there, basically. If you substitute those terms in what I wrote, we'd have, "we don't actually have dispositions for or against any behavior in the social-interaction [rather than the] biological world," or in other words, we only have dispositions for or against any behavior in the biological world. You can't have a disposition for or against--basically, a judgment or a preference for/against--any behavior in the social-interaction world.
Again, you'd have to be a bit more specific about what seems like nonsense/gibberish to you. Presumably not all of it, because presumably you're not stumped by this sentence, for example: "Sure, so earlier you brought up the nature/nurture distinction."
This.
Sure, so start with the first phrase you quoted.
"If you substitute those terms in what I wrote"
You are not familiar with the idea of substituting one set of terms for another?
Or did you quote that part superfluously? I mean, I hope we don't need to start with explaining words like "if," or combinations like "If you" etc.
I don't believe that biology and neuroscience are advanced enough. No neuroscientist or biologist could examine human tissues and determine why some people are, for example, conservative and others are liberal.
I think the basic problem here is in the polarizing of "social-interaction" and "biological world." You can't really separate the two. They are mutually dependent.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I'm interpreting "disposition" as instinct or inherent moral intuition, and "social-interaction" as cultural order (with its various concepts and beliefs). So what you appear to be claiming is that "social-interaction" or aspects of culture cannot become intuitive. That is simply not true.
Of course, I may not be interpreting what you've written correctly.
Don't give up, persist and if necessary, prevail.
Exactly!
Quoting javra
:up: :up:
Pay attention you saps, this is what philosophy looks like.
Allow me to go further...
The warrior king ("the Homeric ideals, of Achilles and Odysseus, and earlier) is the depiction of the ethical ideal. The individual found his ethical reality in relation to the warrior king, and the victory of the warrior king signified an ethical victory for the individual. The stage of "considerations of intentions" (Kants contribution, which resolved Hume's dilemma), marks the completion of the dialectical movement into subjectivity for the ethical consciousness (the conscience).
Beforehand, the ethical reality of the individual was mediated through the warrior king, so that, in effect, the ethical existence of the individual was negated. The indirect relation of the individual to the ethical was expressed in depictions of the warrior king as tragic hero, who must make the ultimate sacrifice to save the world. After, the cultural movement into a subjective awareness, the individual no long related vicariously to ethical existence through the victories of the warrior king, but became directly related to the ethical as the responsible moral agent. This dialectical shift of culture into a subjectively dominated conscience rendered the ethical into a matter of personal choice, an individual conviction rather than a conviction determined directly by cultural identity (as embodied by the warrior king).
In gaining the freedom of subjective conscience the nobility of the king, by which the individual ethically oriented himself, was lost. This was alluded to in Nietszche's "death of God" and "slave revolt". After the world historic contribution of Kant, the ethical became nothing but the right to individual opinion.
I don't think we're that advanced, either. But the quote above is an example of the fallacy of moving the goalposts. I never suggested, or never meant to suggest, that. It's not all or nothing, and an explanation which goes some way towards explaining the source of morality is better than no explanation at all, or a bad explanation.
I stand by my claim that your objection to what you see as a problem with my explanation, namely your assertion that it doesn't explain the divergence of moral judgements, is a faux-problem. It's not a problem with my explanation, it's a problem you have with it. You haven't justified your assertion that my explanation doesn't account for what you assert it doesn't account for, and I've said enough on the matter to have resolved the problem you're having. But you've persisted in your assertions regardless, and our exchange broke down when you made what I consider to be false claims that I hadn't explained something, and you then tried to get me to go back and quote myself or repeat myself, which I objected to doing on the basis that it's unnecessary, and because I judge it to be an evasion of responsibility on your part, or, at worst, just a debate tactic.
No one here can provide a perfect or complete explanation, so that's no kind of objection. And pointing to very specific things that my explanation can't account for in detail, and never claimed to be able to account for, doesn't justify rejecting what I have actually said.
What I have actually said is that moral judgement is founded in emotion, and emotion can be explained (not perfectly!) through neuroscience. The person who judges cannibalism to be wrong would have experienced negative emotions about cannibalism which swayed his moral judgement, and the person who judges nothing to be wrong with cannibalism would not have had that experience. Whether or not they're clones is irrelevant. The clone thing was a result of a misunderstanding you had about what my position entails. They would feel differently about it, and would have different moral judgements as a result, and this can be explained (not perfectly!) through neuroscience.
I don't have a burden to repeat these explanations endlessly to someone who denies that I've made them, and I don't have a burden to justify claims that I've never made.
I asked you to be specific about what you can't make sense of/why you can't make sense of it. Pretty much quoting the whole thing isn't being specific about what you can't make sense of/why you can't make sense of it. I obviously don't think I said anything difficult to comprehend. I obviously don't think I said anything nonsensical, etc. So how is it supposed to be obvious to me what you would have difficulty with?
:lol:
"Mutually dependent" doesn't mean "they're identical so that we can't possibly separate them" does it? After all, if it meant that, we'd not even be able to say that x and y are mutually dependent, because x would be identical to y and it would be impossible to identify an x versus a y.
For example, it makes sense to say that evaporation and precipitation are mutually dependent. It doesn't make sense to say that evaporation and evaporation are mutually dependent. Evaporation and precipitation are mutually dependent, but they're not the same thing. We can identify one, we can talk about properties with one that make it non-identical to the other (after all, they must have some non-identical properties or they would be identical and we'd not be able to talk about mutual dependence), even though they're mutually dependent. Conflating the two just won't do if we're doing meteorology, climatology, etc.
:brow:
But that's impossible.
What could be the beginnings of morality?
As I see it morality is ''simply'' about how you treat others. From what I've observed there is no need for morality within a family or community and so on. We ''automatically'' treat family, friends and anybody we bond with in a good way.
There are two ways of viewing this state of affairs:
1. You subdue your ego and put others before yourself. In effect you work by the principle ''others before me''.
2. You expand what you identify as self. The family is basically the self, dilated. Likewise a group of friends, a community, etc. are extensions of the self/your ego. I am ''we''.
Morality, it seems, has its origins in knowledge of the unity of humanity and by extrapolation, if you factor animal rights and environmental awareness, the unity of all life itself.
What is morality about then? It's a social thing isn't it? What would one person do with morality?
I'd (unfortunately) guess that most families wouldn't actually agree with that.
Morality is about right and wrong, good and bad. Too many people on this forum confuse their own judgement about what's good with what morality is. There's a whole debate in ethics between individualism and egoism, on the one hand, and their opposites in collectivism and altruism, on the other. Like I said, it is not a good example of applying critical thinking skills to jump ahead and just assume that whatever side of that debate you are more sympathetic towards is what morality is all about.
I am one person. What I'd do with morality is seek to improve my character.
Whywould you do that? In which world does character have any moral value except in a social setting?
That would be this world. I would do that because it matters to me. It has moral value to me.
How right you are but that doesn't negate what I said about morality being essentially a social phenomenon explicable with recognizing some form of unity among peoples. In essence we recognize the other as just another token of ourselves and that makes us moral.
I appreciate the thought. I guess it makes sense to be good to yourself. This doesn't make complete sense to me though. Can you explain to me how a world populated by one single sentient being can have any moral dimension?
It's about social interaction, and social interaction influences it, but the social realm can't literally have moral stances, because we can't have moral stances in lieu of meaning, in lieu of behavioral preferences, etc. And those things only obtain as mental phenomena. There is no social mind.
So, if you found yourself in that scenario, you wouldn't try to resolve one of the most famous moral dilemmas of all time: whether to be, or not to be?
"Goes some way" is a rather euphemistic way of saying what? Inadequate.
Quoting S
Inadequacy or 'going some way' is problematic in its deficiency. Clearly that's not a problem for you, and yes, it's a problem for me, and anyone else who is interested in an explanation that goes further than "some way."
Quoting S
I'm not sure why you believe that emotions are any less dependent on culture than morals, or that neuroscience can 'adequately' explain emotion. Do you think that we're born with a full set of emotions or something? That we have, for instance, an inherent sense of schadenfreude?
Biological affect is theorized to consist of two basic dimensions, namely pleasure vs. displeasure and high arousal vs. low arousal. How these feelings are interpreted in different circumstances conforms to a conceptual framework, a framework imparted to us by our culture.
Quoting S
And the person who judges it to be right would have experienced positive emotions about it?
If a person can go either way depending on the culture that they're raised in, it would appear reasonable to conclude that nature & nurture is a more adequate explanation than mere nature.
There is no explaining the source of morals without including the societal component. We are not only born with a predetermined biological makeup, but when one is born he also inherits the historically developed pathos of the society into which he is born. [I]The Geneology of Morality[/i] explains it all.
How would you say that culture can impart a conceptual framework? How would you be able to literally acquire concepts from someone else?
Let's get more specific, though. How does someone literally learn a concept?
There’s a variety of methods.
You’re do that thing again where, if I knew what you’re point was, we could get there much quicker.
The point is that you can't literally be given concepts via social means.
You believe we can be given concepts. So I'm giving you a chance to support that view (against the objections that I'll forward as we go along).
I'll provide you an answer to work with.
One way is by education. A process of communication between teacher and student in which the student appropriates the concept as presented by the teacher. But the student can only be said to have learned something if he knows it. And one knows something by remembering what they have appropriated. Finally, the individual cannot be said to know something until he shows it, by correctly communicating what he remembers.
How are you using “concepts” here? Can you not be introduced to concepts with a society as the vector?
I think that I know what you’re suggesting. Regarding emotions, if the actual feelings we have are some combination of pleasure/displeasure and high or low arousal associated with particular circumstances, how can we have emotion concepts like anger, jealousy, etc. if they are not social constructs?
A very utilitarian approach.
No, because it isn't inadequate in the context of what it can explain. It's only inadequate if you take it out of the appropriate context I had in mind, which is uncharitable at best, and strawmanning at worst. That's not doing good philosophy.
Quoting praxis
Same problem as above. It's your problem, and anyone else's, if you have unreasonable expectations about what it should explain, and your objections thus far have either been denial of what it does actually explain, or an unreasonable expectation of what it can't currently explain because we haven't advanced that far yet.
That we don't have flying cars is not a reasonable basis for not buying a car. That's the kind of fallacy in your reasoning: cars are rubbish because they can't fly.
Quoting praxis
I'm not sure why you're making shit up and trying to pass it off as something I've said or implied. I said the converse, and my wording was different. I said that moral judgement is founded in emotion. Why can't you just pay attention?
We're done here, I think. I'm cutting it off short instead of continuing with the remainder of your reply.
If ‘cars’ are nature and ‘flying’ is nurture, I’ve been saying repeatedly from the beginning that both are necessary for a flying car.
Car + flying = flying car
Car ? flying car
Would it help if I drew pictures?
It would better be said that emotion, as distinct from the most basic affect, is founded in moral and aesthetic judgement. Moral and aesthetic judgements are the foundation of our communal, that is to say emotional, lives, and it is within that context that more complex emotions are possible.
I would argue emotion is more closely related to aesthetic judgement, whereas reason corresponds closer to ethical judgement.
Aesthetic preference is developed through the immediate experience of the pleasurable, and emotive valance comes to be attached to those preferences. It is important to understand that aesthetic judgement is ethically indifferent. It is not concerned with good and evil, but rather with the interesting and the irrelevent (qua. the emotionally stimulating versus the emotionally extraneous). Aesthetically, reason only factors insofar as it relates to emotional impulses. But, sensu stricto, reason cannot be said to factor into the aesthetic because in aesthetic judgement, the emotional impulses are simply swept along without any rational intention.
Ethical judgement is predominantly determined by reason, and although incidental emotional effects might coincide, they remain insignificant. Whereas the aesthetic excludes the sovereign individual, the ethical reinstates him as the deciding agent.
Before the movement into the ethical sphere, the individual is necessarily oriented within the aesthetic. The movement represents a negation of the aesthetic and all that it entails. It is a qualitative reversal, in which the individual turns from an outward focus on interest, to an inward focus on his personal responsibility. In other words, the focus of his judgment no longer pertains to his relation to the world (where his interest lies), but to the world's relation to him (where his responsibility lies). The judgement accounts for the aesthetic existence (how the world seems to be), and makes an ethical determination: how the world ought to be. The individual is subsequently beset with the task of conforming himself to the world as it should be, which generally requires him to subdue his emotional impulses through the power of reason.
But what is the teacher going to present --a set of words a la a set of sounds or text marks? Is that what concepts are?
There’s also (in addition to my previous comments about it) the relative value and narrative that order concept, such as liberty (high value for you) and sanctity, which is something that is undeniably learned though culture.
That phrase I can't figure out unfortunately.
Again, culture can influence values, but you can't actually be given values from something outside of yourself. Values/valuing anything is a mental phenomenon.
Then you would have completely misunderstood me once again.
Quoting praxis
No, it would help if you paid closer attention.
No, it's better how I said it. (And sometimes less is more).
Still unclear how you mean this. A non-mental phenomenon can directly cause mental phenomenon, creating sensory data for example. In the same way an outside source, ie words from a book, can in-still values into our minds. That doesnt have to mean the value exists outside or minds, just that the source does.
I cut the quote short somehow, but should still be clear.
I meant to write *concepts, btw.
What I mean is that what you’re suggesting about learning concepts may not apply to how we order concepts. The order or framework, such as a moral framework, is cultural, and is established and maintained with a narrative, various practices and beliefs, etc.
This kind of dualistic view is difficult for me to appreciate. It feels artificial and not particularly useful.
If someone intentionally made you value (or devalue) something, in what sense have they not given or shared that value?
And we know you don’t clarify because it would reveal the meagerness of your point.
I frequently clarify upon request, but, funnily enough, when someone persistently misinterprets me, or fails to get the point, I tend to become less inclined towards doing so. I am only human, and my patience isn't infinite.
I thought that the point of my analogy was clear enough. And I want to put this to the test by asking someone who I judge to be more capable than you in this regard to tell us what he thinks I was getting at with that analogy.
So, @Terrapin Station, what do you think my point was with the analogy that his criticism of my explanation is like saying that cars are rubbish because they can't fly?
From a certain perspective yes.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Concepts are abstractions from what I've appropriated in my immediate existence, which are communicated via referential signifiers, not necessarily words.
I'll try to save Terrapin the bother.
The source of morals cannot be found in human biology, therefore the belief that it can is rubbish.
As I said, meager.
Morals require biology and culture.
There are two possibilities:
I am not too sure about associating aesthetic judgements with emotion in the basic sense of pleasure, or at least not of sensual pleasure in any case. In my experience the arts at their best afford a kind of intuitive insight into what cannot be discursively explicated. a sense of a profound, seemingly magical, meaning in the greatest works that merely sensual pleasures, like eating do not evoke.
I think this is because art works invoke the presence of the other. There may have been a time when our food was directly connected for us to the beings it came from that this was also the case with eating, but food for us has mostly become commoditized, or so it seems to me. I think the same may be said for impersonal sex.
As Schopenhauer tells us, the aesthetic response is to that which is of no practical significance to us. It is what transports and transforms our consciousness. Of course great art can be, and has become, commoditized too, so for many collectors it is all about possessing precious objects, but I think this is already out of the domain of aesthetics, and is moving into the domain of self-interest and consumption.
In contrast I think ethics is all about self-interest, about what matters most to us, because at its extremes it involves matters of life and death, both for the individual and the community. The almost universal (universal excluding sociopaths) agreement regarding the wrongness of acts such as murder, rape, theft, torture, enslavement and so on, at least when it comes to those whom we think of as our own, is on account of a profound concern, a deep emotional investment, in the overarching importance of communal life. The myth of the separate individual with his private mind is very much a myth of modernity. It is, ironically, most compatible with the mechanistic, inevitably dualistic, model of the cosmos.
I agree with much of what you said there, though, and often apparently contradictory ideas just reflect the existence of different possible ways of interpreting concepts such as
I meant to say that one and two are possibilities. Not to say that S’s thoughts are not magnificent.
Two possibilities and an actuality.
That kind of "dualistic" view is what the world is like. What's your alternate ontology?
If A causes B, it doesn't imply that A is identical to B, does it?
And if A is not identical to B, then A or, whatever makes A obtain, isn't literally the source of B, because we only have B elsewhere. How does it make sense to say that A is the source of B when A isn't itself B?
I suggest hiring a hypnotist who could possibly make us believe that your point is worthwhile.
Can abstractions occur outside of our minds? I don't think they can.
So if concepts are abstractions, they can't be transferred from one person to another in any literal sense.
It was just a side note, expressing a feeling and not an ontology.
I would have preferred it if you had focused on the rest of the post.
Morals have to be found in biology, because they can't occur elsewhere. To occur elsewhere, we'd need meaning, preferences, etc. to be able to occur elsewhere, but they don't occur elsewhere. They're brain phenomena.
Re S's question re the analogy, I'd have to read back through a number of posts. In longer threads like this, where people are posting a lot of long replies, I don't read most of what people are writing--on purpose, because I think that it's problematic that we type so much and gloss over so many issues so quickly.
But it's my whole point here. The source of morals is an ontological issue. Morals are only found in biology, because it's a phenomenon that doesn't occur outside of brain activity.
I'm not sure I understand this comment, but if we want to talk about something else, we should ask a more specific, precise question. Like maybe we want to talk about all of the things that influence moral stances. If so, we should ask about that in so many words.
I reckon you would've got it. Or at least come closer to getting it than other attempts. I doubt you would've responded with some irrelevant nonsense consisting of associating cars with nature and flying with nurture.
Aren't there a number of people participating in threads here?
I'm giving my opinion, based on my preferences.
I'd prefer that it would be, sure. "Shoulds" are our preferences with respect to how things could be contra alternatives.
There are a number of people participating in threads here. One of those people is sharing magnificent thoughts. And then there's a group which crowds together to pooh-pooh them because they're jealous. :smirk:
:rofl:
Quoting Terrapin Station
Moral behavior is not brain activity, and does not merely involve brain activity, although brain activity may be considered to play a part.
Behavior isn't just brain activity (it does require it, and brain activity is a part of it, but not the whole story).
Whether any behavior is moral or not is a phenomenon--a type of judgment--that only occurs in brains.
You could offer evidence otherwise if you want to argue that. Offer evidence that the judgment whether any behavior is moral (or alternately re the conceptual application of some behavior having to do with morality rather than something else) can occur outside of brains. I'll look at the evidence in question if you want to suggest something.
What lovely green eyes you have.
This is where I predict he'll say something about communities, seemingly oblivious to the fact that communities are made up of people with brains, meaning that his proposed explanation is only getting further away from the source, not closer to it.
That is the general perspective I'm coming from. It is my understanding that the philosophers following Hegel (perhaps up to the point of Nietzsche) spoke of the aesthetic as a broad category of phenomenological existence. It was not merely restricted to works of art, but all human artifice. I, personally, derive much edification from this perspective, but I understand it to be only one perspective amongst infinite perspectives, some better than others, but all are mere approximations at best.
Quoting Janus
Indeed, thought is infinite in its reasoning capacity.
All human interpersonal behavior is morally significant, and it obviously does not occur in brains; so no, it is not a phenomenon that occurs only in brains.
If it's extramentally morally significant, what's the evidence of that?
And also, let us not forget, aesthetic response to the natural world.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Agreed: all models are simply models, and can never be what they are modeling.
I would say it can be considered of no practical importance to us, because in aesthetic existence, the individual is simply a passive spectator. Without responsibility, there is no teleological imperative.
The assumption that models are (or can be) identical to what they are modeling is the biggest mistake that philosophers make. And in fact, much of what philosophy does is posit and examine models of existence. It is nothing but immature naivety whenever one subscribes to a single perspective, and argues as if it is the only correct perspective or explains everything.
You're not claiming that people's lives do not have a mental component, presumably. So how is this evidence of moral significance being extramental?
What you quote is my interpretation of S’s illustrious analogy and not something I would say, in case that isn’t clear.
Anyway, I think it’s time to invoke the idiom that you can’t catch wind in a jar. The results would be as inadequate as a car without wings.
So what's your scientific explanation of why moral stances are a phenomenon that can't occur in brains?
I'm not a scientist and strongly doubt such scientific studies exist. Also, I didn't claim that moral stances can't occur in brains.
My turn. Is moral order or moral frameworks biological?
Fuck. No.
Id have given up a while back.
Why does a cause have to be identical to what it causes? This makes no sense me, what is the utility of thinking about it that way?
When I light a match, the chemicals on the end are the source of the flame, aren’t they? The alternative is what, that B is the source of B? The lit matches fire came from...fire? Heat?
https://scholar.google.com.vn/scholar?q=neuroscience+study+of+morality&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart
Talking past each other again?
Have you tried a more charitable interpretation? That might help. Or maybe just reading what I said?
:wink: :point:
Apparently that's what passes for good philosophy these days. Take note, people.
I have always found it counterintuitive that a biological organism would naturally evolve a neurological mechanism (viz. emotion) that would override the fundamental survival instinct in which evolutionary biology is based. I have considered that evolution has made it this far on the merits of survival-of-the-fittest in relation to an adversarial world. So, perhaps emotion is just a more sophisticated form of survival instinct. But that wouldn't explain how a total stranger would react empathically by sacrificing himself to save another (say for example, as soldiers have been known to do during battle).
Or, maybe I have it wrong, and perhaps those emotions which are associated with altruism and selflessness merely belong to those people who are most unfit for survival, and it is only a matter of time before emotion is phased out by our evolutionary development. But then I am forced to consider why evolution would develop such a redundant mechanism as emotion to begin with.
I am interested how such concerns can be resolved.
I think it is emotion in the form of "fellow feeling": affection, empathy or love, as well as self-interest in the form of fear of ostracization, that ensures cooperation within animal and human collectives. It is for this reason that I say that valuing or caring about what binds the collective, and behaving, and for self-reflective beings such as ourselves, even thinking, in terms of that, is what is right and good for social animals; it is simply the best strategy.
Thanks. I'm happy to see that their are some who have the courage to answer questions clearly and directly.
So, it is correct to say social animals have a greater chance of long term survival. That is, each species has moved beyond the immediate survival instinct to some degree. The primary stimulus for the behavior of the social animals can be attributed to "emotion in the form of 'fellow feeling [toward the pack]': affection, empathy"...at least to some degree.
To be clear, I was asking this in the context of: what is the source of morals?
Now, turning to the self-reflective being, although he possesses the same survival instinct as any other social animal (qua. survival of his tribe), he is able to negate his necessary biological relation to the group through self reflection. In this, he discovers he is a sovereign individual who, in essence, stands alone from the group.
When the self-reflective being derives its reality from the group, it would seem that biology is the primary determinant. However, when he transcends his relation to the group, could it be said, he liberates
himself and takes upon a new form of existence which is qualitatively antithetical to the mechanistic determinations of biology?
If so, at this stage the reflective being has moved past the immediate survival instinct, through the social instinct (where the individual's biological relation to the group determines his behavior), and into the understanding that he is capable of determining his own behavior independent from the group. Here an aesthetic assessment has been made. The instant the self-relfective being realizes the smallest extent of his agency, he is confronted with the primary choice: to remain subservient to the group, or to take responsibility for himself (which may, on occasion, require him to conform to the group). Perhaps he enters the ethical sphere by choosing the latter?
Hopefully this moves us further along in our examination of the topic. Please feel free to correct any of my ellipses of reason, or to go further if you will.
Then the analogy invoked makes no sense, because the idiom in question is only coherent due to a scientific reason that we can easily explain.
I agree, it is a foolish mistake that is commonly made by seemingly intelligent people.
Generally speaking that has next to nothing to do with the modern theory of evolution. The term was not coined by Darwin either (just in case you thought it was) and Darwin’s perspective is an old one that has been developed much further - as all scientific theories are.
There are a lot of misconceptions that have been carried into the modern era along with behavioralism that are still clinging on due the steady progression of scientific research - old ideas die hard!
Point being in regards to this pondering:
No evolutionary scientist in their right mind would suggest there is or isn’t a particular reason or path to develop along. A guess in simple terms “shit happens,” but admittedly many have puzzled over the point of “consciousness” in evolutionary beneficial terms - again, another case of self-hoodwinking simply because we’re ill at ease with any suggestion of “shit just happens” regardless of how much truth there is in such a position (because we’re effectively wired to apply meaning where and when we can; even where in the common sense of the term “meaning” there is none).
Note: You may find the idea of “spandrels” interesting in regards to evolutionary bio.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)
Then the analogy would simply be arbitrary.
Quoting praxis
Yes. Anything moral is going to be. Saying that "x is moral," either as a judgment (contra immoral, for example) or as a conceptual application (as opposed to gastronomic, say), which are the two common ways to use that phrase, are necessarily biological, because it's only biology that makes judgments, or that formulates and applies concepts.
Very interesting. I'm gonna have to research it a little more.
It has to be if we're trying to say that since A causes or is a cause of B, then A is the source of B. "The source of" is another way of saying "Where it comes from" or "Where it originates", "Where it arises from" or "What is B properties of." If A causes/is a cause of B, but A isn't identical to B, then we don't actually have B yet when we have A, so naming A doesn't tell us where/what/how B happens to be. This is actually because something else has to be necessary for B--some other substance, and/or process and/or context, etc. If that weren't the case, then A would be identical to B.
Quoting DingoJones
No, because there's something else involved in the flame. The chemicals at the end aren't sufficient to be the flame. So we can't say they're the source. We'd be missing something in our explanation. We need to explain just how/where the flame, qua the flame, obtains.
If someone asks you "What is the source of the flame" and you answer "the chemicals on the end of the match," that wouldn't be sufficient, because the chemicals at the end of the match aren't a flame. The person who asked could point at a match, point at the chemicals at the end, and say, "What the hell are you talking about, there's no flame here." And they'd be right. It's not just the chemicals at the end of the match, but processes, too, and the chemical changes that happen due to those processes. That is the source of the flame. You can't conflate something with causes, preconditions or prerequisites for it.
Less causes
Quoting Terrapin Station
More causes
Well, you have to say what B is identical to (if we don't say what B is identical to then we're not actually referring to B, but something different than B). That's not the same as causes unless we're saying that something can cause itself.
I think we agree on this point.
It's pretty shocking to call emotion redundant.
That's very different to how I interpreted the statement. To state that emotions are redundant is to suggest that they have no function, serve no purpose, are of no use or benefit. And this was in the context of evolution. That seems obviously wrong on scientific grounds. Think fight or flight, social hierarchies, building relationships, dominance, courtship, survival, and so on.
Sometimes I wonder whether people here are reading the same thing that I'm reading. Here is what I was responding to:
[I]"But then I am forced to consider why evolution would develop such a redundant mechanism as emotion to begin with".[/I]
That is a shocking thing to say.
Let's just look at some information on the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system in our brain:
I don’t believe emotions are “redundant” yet I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are certainly “functional,” as in anything more than an effect rather than affect.
When you think about it the “shocking” part is to suggest ‘evolution’ has some developmental idea, and the scary thing in disregarding this is to assume the “shit happens” idea thus presenting us with little more than a sequence of causal events of no consequence from one to the other - hence the profound modern “attraction” of a more nihilistic and anarchic approach to the experience of being; a fatalism that stalls meaning.
If part of the phenomena we're looking at is emotional, then we shouldn't dispense with the emotional aspects, or we're not really doing science at all. Science's aim is to look at what is and to account for it, develop theories about it, etc.
I was being charitable to whathisname and then merely stated that experts in this field have different approaches that would, to some degree, back up the proposition that emotions are “redundant” if viewed through an emotional lens - this is the modern problem of psychology and something Husserl was primarily concerned with regarding the idea of developing a subjective science in order to deal with such problems. A “science of consciousness,” not to undermine the objective value of science though.
Emotions are for regulating energy expenditure appropriately to circumstances and are not all all redundant. They would be redundant if we didn’t have biological bodies, or maybe just our specific biology, to support our brains. How’s that for nonemotional reductionism.
It cannot do this without some variety of order, similar to the way a computer is nonfunctional without software.
If the source of how computers interact cooperatively with each other were asked, it would be insufficient to identify the hardware alone. For one thing, it couldn’t account for the variety of protocols that various computer networks may use.
Science provides only analytical data. The interpretation of what that data means is not science, it is speculation. Speculation is necessary for forming new hypotheses and theories that further scientific investigation, but it cannot be consider a scientific fact until it is sufficiently tested, in which case, it is no longer speculation.
Because scientific analysis requires empirical verification, it becomes necessary to reduce its subject matter to that which is objectively quantifiable, and ignore anything that is not. This makes the sphere of metaphysical subjectivity (consciousness, intellect, emotion) inaccessible. Either that, or else the entire category of subjectivity has to be redefined into terms of objectivity. So it is correct to say emotion is redundant insofar as it pertains to scientific facts.
Yet, just because subjectivity can be considered scientifically irrelevent, does not mean it has no importance elsewhere. I might argue that emotional existence is of supreme importance for the individual subject who directly experiences it, even more important than any degree of knowledge he can obtain through scientific investigation.
I had no intentions of shocking, but I'm glad I did.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I cant say that makes much sense to me.
I know you do not like breaking down posts line by line, me neither though it seems it would be appropriate here, so maybe we can just do one thing at a time. So, this:
The chemicals on the end of the match (and their relevant processes of course, I don’t see the necessity in worrying about the specifics here) causes the flame. You disagree with this because there must be a connection of some kind between the flame and the match head, and there isnt otherwise we wouldnt differentiate between the match and the flame in the first place. Is that right?
Brains aren't dead, static things. They undergo processes. The processes that amount to moral judgments/preferences occur in brains, and only in brains. Conflating influences, preconditions, etc. with what they're influences on or preconditions of is simply--and rather ridiculously--sloppy.
No, I disagree because the processes aren't optional. You do need to worry about including everything. Philosophy doesn't work well half-assed. We need to be precise, complete (at least sufficiently), etc.
In addition, as I said, causes can't be identical to what they cause unless you want to say that something can cause itself. Normally we say that there are causes and effects, and the two aren't identical, as that wouldn't make much sense re making a between between causes and effects.
The processes of ethical judgement do indeed occur in the mind, but the source of morals cannot be adequately explained if we ignore the context (influences, preconditions, etc.) in which ethical judgments are formed. If we exclude the context in which moral judgements are formed, they cannot be explained as anything but caprice - qua. more of an aesthetic assessment.
You're not going to ignore that other stuff if you're explaining them, sure, but we shouldn't move on to explaining them if we can't even identify what they are/where they occur. Explaining them more broadly is a more advanced topic that we shouldn't move on to until we've mastered the basics. And no matter what we do, they're fundamentally "caprice."
That is a matter of opinion whether or not knowledge proceeds from the universal to the particular, or the reverse. I would surmise it is a combination of both, and it would be an error to be committed to proceeding only one way.
If true, then there is no room for individual responsibility in regards to the ethical.
What do you mean by this? As far as I can see ALL moral issues are about how individuals should treat other individuals; this to me clearly suggests ethics concerns how one must live among others - a social/communal context.
This isn't a moral dilemma exactly. It's an existential question based on weighing the happiness/pain in one's life. How this question concerns you isn't about morality. However, if the answer to the question makes you decide on how to treat other people it becomes a moral issue.
If nothing else, we inherit a specific, historically embedded morality from the society into which we are born, we which must take into account.
It isnt really relevant, the chemicals on the end of a matchstick, the chemical process, whatever details you want to include. Doesnt matter, I just mean the cause, whatever you want that to entail. It illustrates the way I think about it regardless.
Sufficiently complete as you say.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Ya, I agree that the two are not identical. That makes no sense to me either. What I do not understand is why you think a cause must be identical to what it causes. Your explanation seems circular and I do not see an answer to my questions in it.
So far...we agree?
Both brains and computers process information. The processes that amount to computer networks of cooperative interaction occurs in computers, and only in computers.
Computers are certainly not as dynamic as brains but they’re not static, at least in the sense that they do the same basic thing that brains do, which is take in data and process it for some purpose.
If you were asked what the source of how computers interact cooperatively with each other is, would you identify the hardware alone?
Because an inadequate identification would result in an inadequate explanation.
And we can't find an adequate identification, because that would require an adequate explanation of what what and where they are.
You aren't able to correctly/adequately identify moral stances, moral judgments, etc. if you're placing them outside of minds.
I don't think that's really what you want to ask me, because "interact cooperatively" is irrelevant to whether we're talking about hardware alone.
I'll explain why: in my view, the hardware/software distinction is only a conceptual abstraction. It's not real/it doesn't correlate to any objective distinction that holds water. The world is comprised of material in dynamic relations. There isn't anything that's not material and there's no material not in dynamic relations with other material. So everything is both "stuff" and processes. Software is material in dynamic relations, and so is hardware. It's the same thing. Hardware and software are just different ways of looking at the same thing, different abstractions that we make.
Focusing on "interacting cooperatively" is wanting to ask me whether we can talk about just one computer, basically. The hardware/software distinction, with respect to what I think that is ontologicaly, is irrelevant to that. Obviously we can't talk about just one computer when we talk about them interacting cooperatively, because we've stipulated in our ask that we're not talking about just one computer.
When we talk about moral whatever, qua moral(ity), though, we're not stipulating something that's interactive, and in fact, the moral part, qua what it is to be moral, is not interactive, even though it's about interacting. Here another rudimentary mistake is being made: conflating something with what it's about. It's basically the use/mention conflation. Use and mention are not the same thing.
I don't. What I kept pointing out was that they're not identical, so we can't conflate the two. That was the whole point. If we're going to talk about morality then, talking about something that causes it isn't sufficient, because the cause isn't identical. I think what came across as confusing is that I said, "If you want to consider cause x to be identical to phenomenon y that we're talking about, then you need to do so and so."
Another confusion here might be over the word "source." "Source" isn't "cause." "Source" is where something starts, as itself. For example, the source of a river isn't what causes a river. It's where the river starts, as the river in question.
If we wanted to just ask, "List some contributing causes to morality" we probably should have asked that. And if people want to focus on that, then we should probably be explicit that that's what we're doing.
Here are some contributing causes to morality in that sense:
The big bang
The formation of the Earth
The presence of water on the Earth
Etc. (and there are important illustrative reasons why I'm listing such things as causes, including that we're not at all tackling the issue of just how temporally or logically contiguous any proposed cause is)
I'm talking about what morality is ontologically. Where it occurs, what it's a property of, etc.
"All moral issues are about . . . " isn't focused on that.
The distinction is similar to the use/mention distinction.
How does that follow in your view?
I'm not talking about universal versus particular.
I'm talking about not being able to get on a bandstand and play "Giant Steps" when one doesn't even know what a G major chord is. You need to know the basics before you tackle something advanced that incorporates the basics.
Another way to put it--you're not going to build a house if you can't even hammer a nail.
Are you a dualist, then? Physical and mental? I'm not sure where I stand on that, but explanations in terms of the physical can explain quite a bit. It seems uncharitable to call them inadequate. I'm both amazed and fascinated by how much we've already discovered.
Ok, I think you are right. “Source” was (at least) the source of confusion. It seems obvious how I meant that in context, but I didn't think of your distinction between cause and source so...now I know.
Ok, so just to check the page here using my matchstick analogy: what is the cause of the flame (primarily, no need for lists. Just give me an idea) and what is the relation between the source of something and the start of something?
Cortical and limbic interactions in the development of self-regulation and free-will
That’s a rather long way to get around the question. I think you know I was simply trying to identify an analog for morality in computers. Are you suggesting that the comparison is invalid because there’s something *special* about human morality?
I’m wondering if you’re both amazed and fascinated by how much we've already discovered in the ‘soft’ sciences.
Obfuscation.
I don't understand, what do you see as the relevance of free will (and the responsibility issue with respect to it) to whether moral stances are essentially a matter of "caprice"?
"Special" just in the sense of being different. I can't really think of an angle from which I'd say the computer example is similar to morality.
Caprice: a sudden and unaccountable change of mood or behavior. (Meaning not a conscious choice, hence no responsibility.)
That is what the caption from my last post confirms. By the way, that quote is taken from a preeminent study on neuro-biology. It says it all
You're seeing it as contra free will--and you made a comparison to aesthetic judgments? Do you think that aesthetic judgments are deterministic?
I would say that free will plays a large part in aesthetic assessment and the production of human artifice. In aesthetic assessment, the free will corresponds to intellect and creativity.
The ethical is a qualitatively different mode of existence. As the article says, "at a physical level, morality is not a unified concept yet free-will seems to be". So it does not meet the sufficient criterion for scientific investigation, and must be explained through another discipline (the article assigns the task to the humanities).
I think that is a possibility that comes with mastery of symbolically sophisticated language; historically it is a late cultural development. I don't believe that individuals "in essence, stand alone from the group". I think that, considered through the lens of certain perspectives, individuals may be seen to stand alone from the collective. One such perspective is Christianity, the faith wherein we stand naked before God, to whom the faithful find their ultimate responsibility belongs.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Of course it can be said that everything about us, as with any other animal, is rooted in biology. It does seem to be the case that the elaborate self-reflection enabled mostly by language, and most spectacularly once it is sufficiently sophisticated by culture, enables us to do the completely unexpected: to act, not merely in accordance with so-called instinct, but "on a whim" or in a highly controlled and deliberate way contrary to our desires. Such possibility can probably be seen actualized in nascent form in some of the so-called "higher" animals.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I think this is true. There would seem to be little reason to doubt that, even in prime-itive tribal cultures, it is possible for individuals to act contrary to the established traditions and collective wishes of the group. Once an indivdual becomes aware of the possibility of such a choice, she may choose to act contrary to the tribe or more be more circumspect and conform. I think it also depends on the gravity of the action that is being considered.
If it is a "life and death" matter, most prudent individuals will likely conform. Also moral taboos are internalized, but the likely light punishment for transgression of a relatively insignificant taboo may not be too much of a constraint. I don't think "choosing the latter" is the doorway to the ethical sphere, I think that threshold has already been traversed with the lucid realization of the actual possibility of choice.
We can consciously endeavor to condition ourselves so that our responses or subconscious predictions are of a desirable quality. At least in that way we are responsible.
Excellent point. It is important we never forget that we are only discussing a perspective, and not some final or absolute truth
Nevertheless, the relation of religion to the ethical would make for an interesting topic. But, unfortunately, I don't think enough of the members here on TPF are able to traverse perspectives as seamlessly as those like Janus the bifrontal.
Also, let's not forget that Kant and the subsequent phenomenological perspective has contributed much to the notion of individuality, but done so methodologically and scientifically, rather than through the cultivation of faith.
Quoting Janus
Rhetorically speaking, to identify with individuality is antithetical to group identity. Nevertheless, as it stands, whenever two or more individuals relate, they constitute a virtual society and infect each other with culture. You would have to live in the mountains, with the wolves and hawks, if you were to stand alone in the strictest sense.
Quoting Janus
The so-called "free world" is built on that attitude of the right to individual opinion.
We can also consider the weight of the decision to alienate one's self from the group tradition as resulting from a personal conviction of ethical responsibility. Such a thing can be extremely counterintuitive in relation to the natural instinct toward group preservation.
Quoting Janus
I can agree with that, the group morality is just as much a matter of ethical judgement as individual morality. But, I might add that choosing the latter would immerse one deeper into ethical existence, since responsibility becomes acutely focused on the individual rather than diffusely on a collective.
I'm wondering why you didn't answer my questions, but to answer yours: yes, psychology in particular.
Your are mistaking responsibility for recognition.
What you are talking about is an aesthetic assessment, the part about "conditioning" is only a matter of self interest, it has nothing to do with the ethical. The ethical only gains relevance in proportion to how conscious an individual is in relation to his endeavor; and sufficient consciousness of one's personal responsibility to endeavor, qua. conscience, is a necessary (but not sufficient) component of ethical existence.
What would you say that it amounts to for a concept to be "unified" "at a physical level"?
In my opinion, it would be something that is generally agreed upon within the scientific community. Given that conventional scientific methodology directly investigates the material aspect of reality, it has merit in defining its subject matter as such. Yet, because its criterion confines itself to such strict measures, it is restricted insofar as what it can adequately explain, such as the metaphysical.
But this does not necessarily rule out the existence of any metaphysical realities (*which are more likely to be multiversal than any physical reality, pardon the digression). Hence, the ethical, although it may stem from biology, cannot be adequately explained in terms of biology.
So we could say that there's a generally agreed-upon definition in the community. So first, what's the evidence that that's the case for "free will" but not for "morality"?
The scientific community is not some accidental product of the universe, it is an institution governed by strict regulations, which through it's very own agency establishes criteria of standards and practices that could, at any time, be overthrown, if it were scientifically applicable.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Its only evidence if your criteria for explaining morality is in terms of biology, and not, say, in terms of philosophy.
I haven't the faintest idea what any of that has to do with my comment above it.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Say what? I was asking you what the evidence was for something that was claimed.
Yes, it was claimed in a peer reviewed publication regarding a study on the relation of neuro biology to ethics. Are you stupid or just plain booty?
And the evidence of it? Was the evidence given in the article?
Then you would agree that biology has shit to say about morality. Otherwise you are just contradicting yourself for masterbatory purposes.
What in the world are you talking about? I'm asking you a question.
Jesus christ!!!
Of course it was given in the article, do you understand what the purpose of a bibliography is?
Okay, so what was the evidence, just a similar claim in another article or book? (Since you mentioned the bibliography)
Everything you have posted recently screams: "I reject everything involved in the process by which scientific methodology establishes facts about the material world."
I cant necessarily disagree with that sentiment.
I'm just asking for the evidence of a claim. If you don't know, that's okay, but I would just say that.
Recognizing the responsibly, sure.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
What do you mean an aesthetic assessment?
Of course we can work to condition ourselves for various objectives but since we’re talking about morality we might assume that I was referring to the morality relevant sort.
Am I a dualists? No. I wasn’t sure how serious a question that was and also didn’t want to lose track of the subject in a tangent, or at least an uninteresting tangent.
I didn't need an essay. A yes or no, and perhaps a brief explanation, would have been fine. And you had already seemingly lost track of the subject, which isn't about computers. Anyway, so you think of the order you were talking about as physical then, presumably. We're supposed to be talking about the source of morality, and if you think that order is of relevance, then discussing what kind of thing that is doesn't seem off topic.
You do not understand how science works, do you?
I don’t think it’s about flying cars either. What do they call it? Oh yes, an analogy. They’re sometimes used to help bridge gaps in understanding between people. Unfortunately, those offered the bridge are sometimes unwilling to cross it.
:lol: :point:
The conditioning of ethical behavior doesn't sit well. Conditioning seems to detract from the immediate responsibility that quintilessentialy defines ethical existence. Responsibility implies risking something by committing myself to a specific set of moral principles. It means that it is highly plausible that in the last moment, I can do the wrong thing and betray my principles. On the other hand, if it is the system of conditioning that is ehtically responsible for me, then if I am properly conditioned, it is impossible for me to do the wrong thing in the last moment; and if I don't do the right thing at all, then I haven't been properly conditioned, and it is still the system of conditioning that is ehtically responsible for my wrongdoing.
You're confusing me with someone else, like Terrapin. I have never actually claimed that morals are a matter of preference.
But not the serial killer, baby-puncher part. That's spot on. I also fuck my own mother. And sometimes I set fire to old ladies.
Are you suggesting that we don't need evidence of an empirical claim?
Representation Is a Re-Presentation of Medieval Birth-Class Supremacy
But isn't the vicarious sense of victory when "your" team wins a continuation of this primitive negation, through substitution, of self-identity? More important, doesn't representative government satisfy that serf's perspective?
They can't do it as well as me. And even if that were all I did here (it isn't), there would be [I]nothing wrong with that[/I].
It is all you do here that I’ve seen, and it’s not doing philosophy.
No need to get so specific. Just post a list of 100 books and I'll read them all on the remote chance that any of them actually provide the evidence I'm asking for.
Then why did you ask me to? You are very confused.
So you deny that neurobiology can tell us anything about the source of morals.
If you do not explain your position, that is the necessary conclusion tha we must arrive at.
I don't care one way or another, but, I'm not so sure you even know what your position is. I think you are just flapping ass cheeks, and you seem to enjoy the smell of your own farts.
You said, "At a physical level, morality is not a unified concept yet free-will seems to be"--which you just quoted again above.
I asked you what a "unified concept" would amount to. You answered: "it would be something that is generally agreed upon within the scientific community."
So in other words, "At a physical level, morality is not a generally agreed-upon concept within the scientific community, yet free will seems to be."
So I asked what the evidence was supposed to be for that. What's the evidence that morality is not a generally agreed-upon concept within the scientific community, whereas free will seems to be a generally agreed-upon concept within the scientific community?
The answer to that isn't "Hey, read these 100 books given in the article's bibliography. The evidence must be in them somewhere. The article is peer-reviewed, after all."
More evidence that you don't know what you're talking about.
So...what's your point?
My point in this tangent is that I was wondering what the evidence was for "At a physical level, morality is not a unified concept yet free-will seems to be"
In the context of philosophical discussions, I'm often skeptical of various claims that are made. So I'll inquire into that as the discussion goes along.
Yes, at face value it would seem to be analogous.
Direct democracy does satisfy the serf's perspective in the strictest sense. I would say that it is paradoxical, in that it begins on the premise that everyone has equal right to individual opinion, yet such a right makes everyone essentially unequal. And, to go further, democracy proceeds to reconcile this pardox (to negate the right to individual opinion) by governing through mass consensus.
What evidence is there that this is not the case? This question is much more important.
I don't know if it's the case or not. The claim was that it is. So I'm simply asking for the supporting evidence for it. It's a fairly simple empirical claim, but we'd need to actually do the survey to know it.
Then, let's agree. We can make no empirical claims, which means we cannot talk about morality in empirical terms. So what's the big deal?
A Republic Is a Foster Government
Read more closely and you may realize that what I mean by "serf's perspective" is the opposite of direct democracy, which would be "Serfs Up!" My use of "serf's perspective" is a condemnation of those who surrender their political identity because others, who impose a republic on them, force them, by devious methods of thought control, into lacking the confidence to assert their will. Submissives really don't belong in America and should go back to kneeling before the crumbling castles of Europe, sheepishly letting themselves choke on the dust from the guillotined skulls of the Masters such cowards worship.
Just because some citizen's individual opinion may not prevail doesn't at all mean he's given up his individual rights. Those who preach the scare stories of "mob rule" and "tyranny of the majority" want to impose snob rule and the tyranny of a self-appointed vanguard. Notice how all the Communist tyrannies refer to themselves as "republics." Rather than being tricked by the equally illegitimate other wing into saying that they aren't "real republics," I have independently concluded that all republics are elitist, decadent, and insulting to their own citizens.
I read as closely as humanly possible. But what you said was quite vague and wide open for interpretation. Don't forget to adequately explain your position and define the relevent terms, or you may not get your point across as intended.
Quoting TheSageOfMainStreet
What would it look like for such slaves to assert their will in this scenario?
I think it would resemble direct representation. In the Nietzschean sense, democracy, whether direct or representative, is a consequence of the slave revolt.
Quoting TheSageOfMainStreet
Well if they are imposing their morality on anyone else, even if it is a morality of individualism, it is still an attempt toward a slave morality; I can only apply the morality of the individual to myself if I wish to avoid transfiguring it into a slave morality. Otherwise I am positing a teleological contradiction.
Quoting TheSageOfMainStreet
Indeed.
Also Spank Zorro's Sister
With this snobbish term, "slave morality," you just illustrated why Nietzscheism led to Naziism. Likewise, Heisenberg's irrational physics led to his irrational and authoritarian politics. Apologists who preach that those two were inconsistent or had their ideas perverted are making shallow excuses for their own misinterpretations.
You are mistaken and most likely uninformed. But I like your youthful enthusiasm, so I will take the time to correct you.
Nazism derived directly from Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of History. In fact, both those works directly inspired Mein Kamph. The only reason Nietzschean philosophy came to be associated with Nazism is because of his anti-semitic bitch of a sister, who perverted his ideas, after his death, for political purposes.
The main evidence is found in concepts of the world historic figure and ubermensch. If you actually understood the difference between them, it is obvious which one explains Hitler.
But I'm not saying anything akin to "We can make no empirical claims."
What are you saying then?
I think that was your point. The evidence, here, is a bunch of shit done by neuro-biologists.
In the article, some academically active neurobiologists basically admit that neuro-biology cannot adequately explain morality without supplemental explanations from nonscientific disciplines.
On one hand, if their evidence (which they thoroughly reference in their article) is sufficient for the claim to be correct, then neurobiology cannot adequately explain morality, like they claim. On the other hand, if we say that the evidence provided by these scientists is insufficient, then it doesn't matter what neurobiology says about anything, since any evidence a neurobiologist provides (e.g. a reference to a clinical study) to support any claim is inherently insufficient; and in this case, neurobiology cannot adequately explain morality.
Either way, neurobiology cannot adequately explain morality.
Sheep Goosestepping Behind Chickenhawks
Nietzsche advocates asserting ourselves. That led to admiration for those who asserted themselves without any talent justifying that right, so bullies and aristocrats. I can see falling behind screeching Nazis if you think all other people are gutless and meek pushovers.
I was asking for the empirical support of a particular claim.
I asked you what made something a "unified concept." You said that a consensus about it made it "unified." So I'm asking for the empirical evidence of the claimed consensus (re the concept of free will) versus the claimed relative lack of consensus (re the concept of morality). What would that have to do with a "bunch of shit done by neurobiologists"?
Because were talking about what neurobiology says about morality, and it is neurobiologists who are saying it.
I said that is what would make it unified, but I only meant, amongst the scientists who agree with each other. Sorry if I took that fact to be implicit in what I was saying.
Well, "consensus" refers to agreeing with each other. The claim is about relative agreement on what one concept refers to versus what another concept refers to, right?
You'll have to do some research into how neurobiologists (or any scientific community) come to form consensus in order to form unified concepts, which they can then proceed to scientifically test.
How can hard work or difficulty be associated with morality?
In that sense, these neurobiologists are saying the concept of morality cannot be agreed upon, in effect they cannot proceed forth with scientific testing until they can agree what it is.
We'd simply do a survey of each individual's concept.
This was supposed to be about [I]the source[/I] of morality, remember? There was never any claim, as far as I'm aware, that neurobiology can adequately explain morality. And if there was, it would be off topic. It can definitely provide insightful information on the source of morality, and those who are saying that this isn't adequate are just coming across as unappreciative and obstructive.
Is that what it led to? I don't think those admirers upheld the Nietzschean spirit very well.
Quoting TheSageOfMainStreet
I can understand falling behind Nazi's if you are a spineless sucker, and enjoy taking orders from other people.
And out of a pool of opinions, they would synthesize a unified concept by accepting some, and rejecting others.
Well, you can't literally have a collective concept. Concepts are inherently individual, personal.
The question we are considering is whether or not neurobiology can adequately explain the source of morality without supplemental explanations from nonscientific disciplines.
The article I linked in a previous post (Intentionality and “free-will” from a neurodevelopmental perspective) claims that neurobiology cannot adequately explain morality because it it is not a unified concept at the physic level.
Complacency? More like diligence.
Then we will have to conclude: if we have no literal collective concepts, then there is no way to unify a concept, literally, so that it might be studied in some degree of objectivity, e.g. at a physical level. But it might be possible to do so nonliterally...whatever that is.
Well, you can tell well enough if there's a consensus by looking at the language (from an objective perspective --utterances, text, etc.) folks are associating with their concepts.
Ok. So, we can say: we create unified concepts by indirectly relating to the concepts of others through utterances, text, etc. Given this, it shows that any unified scientific concept is extremely unscientific.
Elaborate on what you just said, it sounds a bit like when people laugh loudly in the back of a movie theatre while punching themselves in the face.
I think doing hard work / accomplishing difficult things are painful in the short term but rewarding in the long term. Long term > short term so these things counts as good morally.
Yet in excess they're detrimental, so they can't be inherently moral.
So its more like hard work is good and fatigue is bad. Stop working once your fatigued.
Just read the conversation between Terrapin and I, that should give you some context.
I don't need to read your conversation for context or insight into a separate conversation, but thanks for patting yourself on the back in front of me, for what accomplishment I'm not sure, I greatly appreciate it.
Then stfu. Your verbal masturbation is obscene.
Did you just use the grade school rubber glue counter on me? That's genius.
You are right, what am I doing conversing with qn insignificant twit.
When I asked you what a "unified concept" was supposed to amount to (I'd never use the phrase "unified concept" myself--it seems like a category error to me, hence why I need to ask), you said that it's a concept for which there's a consensus. Given what concepts are, that could only refer to people saying similar things when you ask them what their concept or definition of x is.
Given this definition of "unified concept," it doesn't make any sense to say that we could intentionally create one. It would simply be a contingent matter of whether people are thinking about something (a la a concept they've created) similarly, as reflected by the words they're uttering.
That was not the original question. This discussion about adequacy stemmed from a later comment by praxis, and he was never clear on what criteria he was going by, so we had a situation where I thought that it was good enough to have a meaningful discussion, and to get somewhere productive, whereas he was making it out to be some big problem just because it isn't perfect or complete or something along those lines, and then you jumped in on his side of the argument.
Why are we even discussing this tangent? Isn't it interesting enough to discuss what we know about the source of morality, in answer to the opening post? It's about what neuroscience can explain, not what it can't. It's like some people are just looking for an argument.
I was certainly never talking about anything like that, a fortiori because I refuse to do "explanation" discussions (a la "is this explained?") without first exploring someone's general criteria for explanations, and no one ever even starts trying to do their general criteria for explanations . . . because no one actually has any such criteria. They simply use "explanation" comments ("that's not (sufficiently) explained" etc.) as a bludgeon for views they don't care for.
I wouldn’t say “nonscientific disciplines,” whatever that is. I used the term “soft sciences.”
The source of morals must include culture. Neurobiology is an incomplete or ‘inadequate’ source.
Quoting S
I read yesterday that someone wrote a plugin that can help you ignore such people. I predict that it will be wildly popular.
'Incomplete' is a better word, and this was never denied. You read too much into my comments if you actually thought that I was denying that.
Quoting praxis
That's okay. You can take cheap shots at me. I have quite thick skin. This just means that you can't act like you have the moral high ground without being a hypocrite.
I've seen this line of reasoning for 11 years from so-called "atheists." They claim emphatically and dogmatically, & continuously, "We're all born atheists, it's a scientific fact" and their leader, the most vociferous of the four horsemen of the new atheist apocalypse, a self proclaimed "militant atheist" emphatically states, "If you're born in Iran, you're a Muslim."
The problem with this line of reasoning is that the science in the major premise is disavowed by their greatest scientist.
Evolutionary psychology is problematic because evolution has no interest in the truth about anything.
And the truth is that God created us, etc.?
What does science have to say about that?
I can agree with that. Perhaps I was overgeneralizing.
Quoting praxis
Yes, but Terrapin and S have no argument after I introduced that article (Intentionality and “free-will” from a neurodevelopmental perspective), in which it is asserted that morality cannot be adequately explained from a neuro developmental perspective. So, now they are scrambling to save their wet paper bag full of irrattional opinions by vomitting out a bunch of confused rhetorical nonsense.
Quoting praxis
Lol. But, I would never ignore S. I have too much fun watching him get dizzy when I'm running philosophical circles around him.
Ok guy, sure you don't do explanation discussions. But, please go on and explain more about how you dont explain things.
Then it follows that all of science is complete bullshit. So then, let's agree to never mention science when trying to validate a point about anything.
But that is just it. People begin throwing out neurobiological explanations for the source of morality, and then we proceed to discuss it. And it isn't going well for those who put all their eggs in that basket.
What do you mean I "have no argument"? No argument against what? I don't need to argue against something that misses the point. I already explained that the relevant topic is the source of morality (which is crystal clear from the title: just scroll to the top of the page), not simply morality. And I already explained that I am not in disagreement with either yours or the other one's claims about "inadequacy", now that you've bothered to actually clarify what you mean.
And I'm glad you haven't ignored me, because your bluster is quite amusing.
Ok, sorry for my mistake.
Debates about whether something is explained, goofball.
I can't even begin to imagine how confused you must be, or how you could have ended up that confused, if you think something above has some implication for whether science is bullshit.
It could have been a more productive discussion, but then began the whining about inadequacy, and things were taken out of context. Instead of talking about what we know through science about the source of morality, it became an opportunity to attack the limits of science. Yawn.
I have learnt that it would probably be better for me to just look for answers myself instead of trying to get somewhere through a discussion on a philosophy forum. Sometimes I forget this. Books are often more sensible and more knowledgeable than people on the internet.
No, you began with claims about a specific science (neurobiology) and not science in general.
People may not want to ignore you so much if you were more honest.
If you reject the direct evidence our noetic subsystem of mind is evaluative and supervisory, then there's still the logic of Sherlock Holmes. If you rule out all of the other possibilities and all the other possibilities here are those suggested by materialism then what is left must be true and what is left is that there is an immaterial subsystem which is responsible for awareness.
The word 'God' has a bad rap from the God hater position and that's why I didn't use it in the comment you replied to.
But if we only discuss it as an effect of neurobiology, we will never adequately understand the source of morals.
Nah, you just can’t waste time with dummies and ideologues who can’t listen.
Really? I assumed it was because you were trying to using science to invalidate evolutionary psychology, and it would have been awkward, to say the least, had you mentioned God in the same breath.
What do you figure is a non-neurobiological source?
A non-neurobiological explanation for the source of morals would include historical or societal explanations that go far beyond the scope of neurobiology.
If you really want to know.
If spiritual longings evolved in the same way as our desires for food, drink, sex and knowledge, how could those longings be incapable of fulfilment? Imagine two genetic lines, one of which spends significant time and resources searching for mucta, which does not exist, and another like it in all respects except for the mucta-drive. Cleary, the second line will out-compete the first. For such evolutionary competition, we need the two variants, each able to pass its mucta-desire trait on to its heirs.
If we take mucta to be God, the naturalist hypothesis points to the demise of spirituality. Is this hypothesis viable? There are atheists who profess no spiritual longings, and they tend to pass their position on to their children. So, while the preconditions for the evolutionary demise of spirituality exist, theists are not an extinct variant, but the majority of the population. So, spirituality is adaptive. Its adaptiveness is confirmed by the correlation of spiritual behavior with health, psychological well-being and longevity.7 Thus, if evolutionary psychology correctly accounts for the development of behavior, including spiritual behavior, it is hard to see how the quest for God could be baseless. At the very least, naturalists attacking religion and spirituality are working to reduce human fitness.
7 Hummer, et al. (1999), "Religious Participation and U.S. Adult Mortality." See also ScienceDaily (1999), "Research Shows Religion Plays a Major Role in Health, Longevity." Maselko, et al. (2006), "Religious Service Attendance and Decline in Pulmonary Function in a High Functioning Elderly Cohort." See also ScienceDaily (2006a), "Go to Church and Breathe Easier." Maselko, et al. (2008), "Religious Service Attendance and Spiritual Well-Being are Differently Associated with Risk of Major Depression," See also ScienceDaily (2006), "Weekly Religious Attendance Nearly as Effective as Statins and Exercise in Extending Life."
I only had to remember one word "mucta." But he talks about little else throughout his book, 1000 authoritative case references, more with the videos, and each one of those science books has maybe 100 references.
Love to me is more important than science, or I guess I would say, "Love and science must be joined at the hip for maximum existential penetration."
Can you be a bit more specific. What would be an example of this?
So in short, what was the non-neurobiological source in all of that?
Is that supposed to be impressive?
Quoting Daniel Cox
Religion, or any particular religion, is not love.
You value truth, as we all do, but you value the system of meaning that you've subscribed to more than you value truth. That's what you're saying, and that's fine, it's quite common.
Anyway, I think we all know that monotheists believe that the source of morals is God.
Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, we still need to lock down what neurobiology can say about the source of morals. No need to complicate it by also asking what history can say.
(Add. But a multi-varied analysis is necessary if we wish to sufficiently understand the source of morals.)
Because there was confusion about this earlier with someone else, are you using "source" to refer to where morals arise as morals? An analogy would be the source of a river.
I knew it! This has all just been one long info-mercial.
"Quick! Act now and you'll get not 1, not 2, but 3 hours of mystical wannabe science for the price of one!"
Oh, but I can and I have. Whether or not I should do so is another matter, of course. And you left out those who nitpick and take cheap shots yet act morally superior. Don't forget that one.
There's that word again: "adequately". We have to start somewhere, clever clogs. There's no need to have a seizure just because I approached the topic from the angle of neurobiology. It can explain a heck of a lot about emotion, and what's morality without emotion? An empty shell. It wouldn't exist. How could it if we didn't feel anything at all about things like murder or rape?
Then how is it that I can have no emotion concerning murder and rape, but nevertheless judge it to be morally wrong?
I agree, and neurobiology is a great place to start, but not to end.
They would be secondary explanations, not explanations at a more fundamental level. They would be complimentary. What you're mentioning is a bit like mentioning tables and chairs when others are mentioning neutrons and electrons. You're further from the source.
You've already had that emotional moment. You don't need it each time. You've already made the connection.
Electrons and neutrons are very scientific .
But, tables and chairs are certainly more practical
Prove it.
If the question was about the source of the universe, would you object that by bringing up the Big Bang, I'm neglecting the Tudor period?
More like you are neglecting the present moment.
You just said that you judge murder and rape to be morally wrong, and it's not plausible that you're a robot. That's sufficient evidence.
Ok, then let me change my judgment, I believe it is a ethical right to murder and rape.
Still no emotion.
Yeah, that's real believable. Why are you being silly?
Take a river. It's source is the snow from a mountain top. Snow has its source in ice precipitation, which has its source in cloud condensation, and so on. All these factors are necessary if we want to adequately understand the source of the river.
You bring it out of me. :wink:
Frim fram.
Such as?
Quoting S
Neutrons and electrons have existed for billions of years longer than tables and chairs, but not all neutrons and electrons result in tables and chairs. Something must have occurred that made one result in the other.
Why don't they present evidence from neurobiology like I done did?
Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or disease. Amnesia can also be caused temporarily by the use of various sedatives and hypnotic drugs. The memory can be either wholly or partially lost due to the extent of damage that was caused.
The source of a river is a common term of art in the Earth sciences. I guess you're not familiar with that. As that term of art, it refers to the point where the river begins as the river in question.
With the way you're using the term why wouldn't "the big bang" be the answer to the source of everything?
You aren't a neurobiologist. How about citing an actual neorobiological study. You can even paraphrase it.
And what does this have to do with the source of morals, besides nothing?
I'm not talking about earth science. I'm making an analogy to the source of morals, and it works. You'll have to vomit up some better rhetoric than that if you wish to make a point.
You didn't deal with either point I made.
(1) "Source" doesn't conventionally denote "causes of x that aren't themselves x"
and
(2) Given the way you're using the term, why isn't the big bang the source of everything?
I think it's clear how we're using the term "source" - in a very ordinary and mundane sense. No need to confuse things by turning it into some cryptic mathematical abstraction.
And I wouldn't mind hearing an explanation on how the big bang is the source of everything. What that tells us about the source of morals remains to be seen.
It was my way of signalling that you (and praxis) were speaking as though you had forgotten my earlier contributions, and one in particular, top of page 9.
Quoting praxis
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
And yet, sitting there, top of page 9:
That's only one example, and brief, but there is of course the [I]entire internet[/I] at your disposal, so...
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Correct. I'm a serial killer.
Emotion is insufficient for morals. Dogs have emotions. Dogs have no morals.
That which is insufficient for morals cannot possibly be the source of morals.
Brains and emotion seem to be necessary for morals. We can confidently say this much simply because all morals as we know them are had by creatures whose overall 'makeup' includes both. However, we also know that not all things capable of emotion have morals, and that not all things with brains have morals.
It clearly takes more.
Can you give me a link or reference to any study done in neurobiology that shows how emotion is the source of morality?
So you're suggesting that critters have morals, @S?
It's currently believed that the amygdala doesn't play the as big a role in human emotion as they once thought it did. Also, according to constructed emotion theory, culture plays a significant role, not unlike that in moral development.
:rofl:
:lol:
Worms and dogs aren't moral agents. Their brains aren't advanced enough.
Not at present, no. I would have to look into it. I was making that connection myself, influenced in part by Hume, who made the connection between morality and its emotional source. Neurobiology then makes the connection between emotions and their neurobiological source.
:roll:
Quoting praxis
Yeah, thanks for sharing your opinion, but I think I'll do my own readings on the matter.
Brains and emotions are insufficient for morals.
So do you agree or not?
You're being one of those people who want a direct answer instead of a more intelligent answer where you have to think about the problem with your question. Do you understand the problem with how you're responding? I didn't spell it out, but if you think about it, maybe you could figure it out from my previous reply without my having to do so.
I agree, but nor are poor responses in my book. There's always room for improvement. Now, do you understand my objection, or do you need me to explain it to you?
Ok. I understand where you are coming from now. I must have missed when you mentioned Hume earlier.
Unfortunately, Hume concluded that our emotions are a matter of conditioning. Hence there is no free will, only the last and strongest passion, as determined by one's past impressions. Hume's position nullifies the possibility of ethical responsibility - and I would argue that free will and responsibility are necessary factors of ethical existence.
Quoting S
This coheres with Hume's ethical philosophy. But it does nothing to make the ethical a matter of personal responsibility or free will. Rather, it reduces morality to nothing but the stimulation of pleasure and pain responses in the autonomic nervous system. If this is the case, then there really is no morality, and consequently, no source of morals.
I have the hunch that there is more to it than this.
Simpleton or Oblivion, pick a side.
I think if it takes 80 pages, we should keep going.
Do it!!!...introduce the categorical imperative...you instigator you.
Well, for me, this is a good point to take a step back and think things more thoroughly, whereas prior to that, the replies to me were such that they were able to be dealt with with a quick and easy reply. However, with a few recent replies, if there are faults, they aren't as glaringly obvious.
I agree, we should have taken a step back probably 8 pages ago.
:joke:
No, that would've premature. You needed more time to be guided in the right direction.
You're welcome. :grin: :up:
Your the best...always looking out for me. Me so happy :cry:
That’s rich coming from you. If just your ad hominems in the topic were deleted, not to mention the thickets of obfuscation, it would probably shave-off a whole page.
Thickets upon thickets.
No thanks.
Speak clearly and sensibly(without self contradiction and/or equivocating terms) and there's no need for me to guess. Logical possibility/entailment does not constitute adequate justificatory ground/warrant on my view. I could later surely arrive at more logically possible scenarios than I can currently imagine based upon what little you've claimed. I've no good reason to assent to one anymore than others. I mean they would all be about what you have not clearly stated.
Quoting S
What proposition/claim/assertion/thought/belief/statement are you're objecting to?
When it comes to questions in this context... simple is best.
:up:
Yes, and where did that stem from?
Quoting praxis
Quoting creativesoul
I guess we'll never know.
(Worms, dogs, and critters don't have morals because they're not moral agents because their brains aren't advanced enough. There, spelt it out all nice and clear for you).
Most likely from the habitat in which individuals grow
Quoting S
Quoting praxis
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting S
Clear enough. You wrote "moral agents". No one else did. Nice prima facie example of moving the goalposts.
That's unacceptable. And to think... I was going to let that go until you kept editing your way into admission. At any rate... You presuppose(in your new goalpost) that morals are existentially dependent upon moral agency. They are not.
Not all creatures capable of forming, holding, and/or otherwise having moral thought/belief are also capable of contemplating what steps to take; what to do next; what they think is the best action to take given the circumstances that they find themselves within at that particular time.
That is moral agency.
Morals are thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. Not all thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour is adequate for moral agency. Moral agency requires thinking about one's own pre-existing moral thought/belief(morals). The former(moral agency) is always existentially dependent upon some form of the latter(pre-existing moral belief;morals).
Some more complex moral thought/belief(morals) are informed by and/or arrived at by more complex and/or critical thinking about one's pre-existing morals(moral thought/belief). Some of which would be the ones arrived at by virtue of complex moral discourse such as the one we're having. All philosophical positions regarding ethics/morality are exactly such.
Having moral agency isn't that complicated. Having morals even less so. The aim here is the source of morals, which I take to be the source of all morals.
In order to be able to carefully consider one's choices regarding which is the best thing to do next(regardless of the complexity of one's worldview) - in order to have moral agency - s/he/they must discriminate between choices(imagine/recognize different possible behaviours) and then decide which is the best given the circumstances. Moral agency arises from pre-existing moral thought/belief(morals).
In the simplest terms...
That which exists prior to something else cannot be existentially dependent upon that something else. That which is existentially dependent upon something else cannot exist prior to that something else. Some morals exist prior to moral agency. Some morals do not. All that exist prior to moral agency are not existentially dependent upon moral agency. Moral agency is neither equivalent to morals nor the source of all morals.
What matters here is what - exactly - counts as brains/emotions that are "advanced enough"? That is the line between a creature having morals and not.
Brains and emotions are not enough for morals.
Yep, you didn't use the word. I suppose that gets you off the hook then. I haven't got the patience to be dealing with uncharitable nonsense about worms, dogs and critters as though it bears any relevance whatsoever to what I was getting at, and nor do I wish to spend my time unduly arguing and going around in circles about what you did wrong; and I especially don't want to see anymore of your usual repetitive gobbledygook about "that which exists prior to" etc., etc., so I'm going to leave it at that.
The big bang is one of the causes of everything, isn't it? You can't have humans if the big bang didn't happen.
So why would that be any less the source of morality, per the way that you're using the term "source," than any other cause you're suggesting, where the cause isn't itself morality?
You must admit that it’s kinda funny that you applied experimental results from critter studies to human morality.
Special pleading, ad hom, gratuitous assertion, and moving goalposts is much better philosophy. Keep doing that.
At least you got in the ring.
No, it's not that much of a stretch, actually. Emotions have an obvious role in morality, and those experimental results are of significance in relation to how our brains function in relation to emotion. Funnily enough, we do have some things in common with "critters", as you call them, but that doesn't mean that we have [i]everything[/I] in common with them, and I certainly wasn't suggesting the silly things that you and the malfunctioning android, Repetitron2000, seemed to have in mind.
I see you can name some logical fallacies. That's nice. But there's a bit more to it than that.
You can’t expect him to list all of your shortcomings.
There isn't much that can be expected of him until he's repaired. Well, except repeating his usual jibber-jabber.
If you regard the big bang as the source of everything, then it is correct to consider it a necessary factor when explaining the source of anything. Yet, although it is a necessary factor in such explanation, as it stands, it is detrimentally inadequate for explaining the source of morals, just like the neurobiological explanation. Both astrophysical and neurobiological explanations of the source of morals may open up the possibility of an ethical reality, but they stop short and leave much more to be desired.
What makes a cause adequate or not?
I'm not sure what makes a cause adequate or not. What would an adequate cause look like?
I do know, however, that which makes an explanation adequate is coherence, consequence, and maybe a little authority.
Why are you asking me? It was your idea. Don't you know what you meant when you wrote "although it is a necessary factor in such explanation, as it stands, it is detrimentally inadequate for explaining the source of morals"? What makes something adequate or not?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
So "the big bang" isn't coherent, has no consequence or authority? I must not know what those words refer to very well.
The big bang is a cosmological event. How are you using it to explain the source of morality? Explain yourself.
If your explanation is sufficiently coherent, and provides a reasonable degree of consequence, you might actually say something valuable regarding the source of morality. Otherwise it is just a bunch of confused rhetorical blabbing.
The point is that it's exactly the same thing as you're doing by talking about social stuff. The social things mentioned aren't identical to morality by any means. They were given as causes, as necessary conditions for morality to arise. Well, the big bang is just as much a cause, a necessary condition for morality to arise. How in the world is the social stuff supposed to explain morality in a way that the big bang doesn't? Neither is morality itself. They're just preconditions for it.
Absolutely. We need a multi-varied analysis.
Should we list all of the causes/preconditions? Wouldn't that be encyclopedia-length?
We should include all the preconditions and limitations for any explanation we set forth. If we did it exhaustively, it would be an immense amount of material, but philosophy is, indeed, a vast field of discovery and creativity.
Shouldn't we focus at least as much on a phenomenon as the phenomenon rather than just talking about preconditions for it?
The essential difference is that we can influence 'the social stuff' and we can't influence the Big Bang. We tend to identify causes that we can influence, because we have goals and such.
Anyway, as I mentioned early on in the topic, differences in moral frameworks can be explained by examining the culture they develop in. These differences can't be explained by investigating the Big Bang.
We could, say, restrict the entire conversation on the source of morality to ethical terms. But that would rule out all reference to the authority of other disciplines (e.g. science or history), and drastically diminish our ability to explain it.
But I don't think such a thing is necessary. I think a multi-varied analysis from the perspective of many disciplines can reveal a lot about any topic. We just need to refrain from committing the reductionist error of equating the explanation with the thing we are trying to explain.
Moral feelings are obviously highly relevant. And social conditions, and most especially moral teachings and injunctions that are a kind of social currency that flows through communities and becomes internalized by their members are also highly relevant.
And let's not forget that in theocratic communities, which include probably most hunter-gatherer communities, as well as most pre-modern agricultural and mercantile communities, moral injunctions are enforced by threat of punishment for transgression.
What is the most dependable method of approach to this topic? I mean, ought we not put good reason to good use here - sound - if at all possible. There's no disagreement concerning whether or not we have morals. There's no disagreement concerning how we come to adopt our first morals(original language acquisition). I assume that we all agree that morals must begin simply and grow in complexity along with our understandings/worldviews. I assume that none of us are going to argue that a zygote has morals. In general, human thought/belief about morals has grown in complexity along with our knowledge regarding the history of morals/morality throughout the world. A robust account/theory of the origen of morals ought be able to take proper sensible account of all of these considerations and more.
Methodology seems to be the contentious issue.
Like some of you, I also agree that the approach needs to be multi-faceted. Empiricism looks towards physical observation. Morals aren't just physical. Thoughts aren't just physical. Beliefs aren't just physical. Rationalism looks towards pure(a priori) reason alone. There is no such thing. Methodological naturalism requires quantification. Does existential quantification count? There's some sense of verifiability/falsifiability possible if we're careful how we frame our line of thinking/vein of thought. Conceptual scheme(linguistic framework) is paramount here.
I disagree with Witt on this matter. The ladder cannot be kicked out from beneath us - unless it is utterly inadequate for justificatory support to begin with. Not all metaphysics shares the inadequacies of metaphysics based upon historical dichotomies unless it is also based upon them.
Even then, we're not kicking it out by virtue of taking it into logical notation - contrary to Quine. Taking inadequate common language use into proper logical account transmits the inadequate explanatory power of the common language use.
Subject/object. Internal/External. Mental/physical. Material/immaterial.
None of the above dichotomies are capable of taking proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.
All thought/belief is one example of a plurality of different things that consist of both, and are thus neither. The presupposition of truth(as correspondence) inherent to all thought/belief somewhere along the line is another. All attribution of meaning is yet one more.
Connections. Associations. Correlations.
Thought/belief is formed when a creature draws a mental correlation between different things. All thought/belief consists of mental correlations drawn between different things. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content regardless of subsequent further qualification.
All meaning consists entirely of drawing mental correlations, associations, and/or connections between that which becomes sign/symbol and that which becomes significant/symbolized. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content, regardless of further subsequent qualification as 'real', 'imagined', and/or otherwise.
Rather, we're systematically replacing the faulty rungs, until - in the end - they're all based upon, agree with, and/or effectively supplant parts of the current knowledge base.
Paradigm shift.
You ought be glad I like you.
Can we take proper account of the basic adopted morals without taking proper account of thought/belief?
Can we take proper account of the "principles" that some say help to govern our behavior without taking proper account of thought/belief?
Can we take proper account of the rules of behaviour without taking proper account of thought/belief?
Can we take proper account of certain habits of behaviour without taking proper account of thought/belief?
Can we take proper account of certain habits of thought/belief if we do not take proper account of all thought/belief itself?
The only answer to all these questions is "no".
Morals consist entirely of thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. They are one kind of thought/belief. All thought/belief share a common basic core. They all have the same basic elemental constituency, so to speak. As a result of having knowledge of the basic minimalist criterion of all thought/belief, there is ground to talk of the origen of one particular kind. Some would agree that there is no stronger justificatory ground than a conceptual scheme following from and/or built upon uncontentious true premisses.
An adequate conception(a basic outline) of all human thought/belief is needed here.
That is a bit of the ground.
I would agree. This would represent the bedrock upon which all manner of conceptual edifice could be constructed. But it seems a bit idealistic. I don't know if this actually exists (other than as a hypothesis); and, if it does exist, it seems as though it would be practically impossible to validate. It is as though we would have to become identical to each other, in the strictest sense, to establish such an apodictic ground of certainty. I would even be willing to suggest that the notion of an epistemological bedrock is a cleverly veiled a priori category.
Nevertheless, I'm willing to try to find it.
I can agree with the utility of assuming everything up to this point, all those factors that lead up to and produce thought/belief - here we can mark a point of origin. But this is only the origin of the source of morals, we must go further. So I suppose, I can say: I hold an open mind in regard to existential quantification.
Btw, great job reframing the issue! :up: :up:
What can you agree to?
I cannot.
A bit regarding a couple of key points.
Interesting. If there are no actual examples to the contrary, that's falsifiable/verifiable.
In the creativesoul sense, I might argue that socio-cultural factors stand as the primary ethical influences on the thinking/believing individual. In effect, ethics are primarily apprehended from an external source, yet it appears as though the ethical only becomes existentially charged in the thinking/believing individual. I feel that it is somewhere in the internalization of morality tha the source of morals lies. (At this point, we are far removed from any cosmological or neurological explanation, as they have previously been synthesized into the notion of thought/belief, of which morality represents one type.)
But, maybe I'm jumping the gun.
Is that Spock logic: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth" ?
Please, point them out. I'm ignorant to them.
That last claim is spot on. I don't like the notion of 'synthesized into'.
If all thought/belief share a common core, and cosmological and neurological explanations are kinds of thought/belief, then they too share a common core.
Morality(rules of acceptable/unacceptable behaviour;thought, belief, and behaviour in more complex moralities) is always first adopted. Not all thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour is existentially dependent upon language acquisition. All codes of conduct are. All thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour are moral - in kind. That is precisely what they all have in common that makes them what they are as opposed to other kinds of thought/belief.
Some moral thought/belief is prior to language acquisition.
Can't be coming from me. Prefixing the term "truth" with the term "the" is not a practice of mine.
Still in process.
Can you give me an example?
Quoting creativesoul
If I could, I would prefix ? term with the term "the". :joke:
No non and/or pre-linguistic human likes being physically harmed by another. All of us find it unacceptable. We all draw correlations between the perpetrator's behavior and the autonomous emotional discontent that follows. We know that we do not like it. It is the attribution and/or recognition of causality. Similar to learning that touching fire causes pain.
I understand what you are saying. The cosmological and neurological are type of thought belief too, as in they have zero a priori significance. Thought/belief, as we use it here is the bedrock for all further investigation. In this case, you seem to be making an obvious distinction between the the neurological, cosmological, and ethical. I am inclined to think that they would figure as independent categories whose pathways of rationale incidentally intersect on occasion. Although each would be unique in its content, all would share a basic conceptual framework based on an incontestable premise.
Elemental constituency is shared. A common core. The same process.
Conceptual frameworks are existentially dependent upon language. Outlines of thought/belief are always existentially dependent upon language. That which is being taken account of is not.
So it is a more primitive morality, more closely related to the autonomic processes of the nervous system, whereas a more sophisticated mode of morality would render the autonomic process so insignificant as to bypass any potential effect it may have on subsequent behavior or disposition.
Word is born my man. I can learn a lot from you. :up:
I'm not at all concerned with a priori significance.
We'll see about that. Ideally, we'll all be learning...
If anything we are discussing can be accused of having a priori significance, it is the notion of thought/belief. 8n relation to the tabula rasa of thought/belief, any cosmological or neurobiological explanation are as much a matter of a posterior understanding as any explanation concerning the ethical or its source.
You modest sunavabitch! :grin:
The goodness and badness of things, is not good and/or bad, but an applied aesthetic; a layer of paint.
Moral conduct is without intent.
Simply acting right, and not because it is right.
So what is the source of moral? Being.
I think that is overly-simplified, and I'm the king of oversimplification, just ask @S.
Is there a thing such as oversimplification? Probably.
Is oversimplification overly simple or just right? Depends on if you're looking at it or something else.
Well, to be looking at it is something quite different from overly simplifying, despite how difficult it may appear to be.
Let me phrase it this way:
Oversimplification and overcomplication are like zoom out and zoom in.
Less pixels vs more pixels; but essentially the same picture.
Versatile approach.
Don't let me get off topic. Let's experiment.
If we establish (not really) an incontestable premise in thought/belief, then let's just pretend, how would we begin to flesh out a method?
Perhaps you can enlighten me here with a hypothetical test run. And then, perhaps, run the "source of morals" through it. I'm willing to offer my ignorance to the effort (add. I mean that in the sense that I have nothing else to offer - I am a simple man.
Not when we're talking about it. You are getting religious.
We shouldn't focus on x qua x when we're talking about it. We should focus on the preconditions for x. Ohhhkay.
Actually, there's definitely disagreement over that. There's no way that language (especially about morals) would come before morals.
Quoting creativesoul
I don't agree with that, either.
Quoting creativesoul
Or that. With that one, I don't believe that anything exists that isn't just physical.
What we need to be more careful about is equating arbitrary causes with the phenomenon in question.
Couldn’t we also say that nothing exists that isn’t just mental?
You could if you wanted to be wrong. ;-)
“Anything” requires a mind to conceive it. Without a mind there would be nothing to distinguish anything. There wouldn’t be anything or nothing.
That's like saying that anything requires a camera to photograph it. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that only cameras exist.
That is precisely what a multi-varied analysis would prevent.
Btw. Such a hardcore physicalist as you shouldn't mention the phenomenological, all phenomena is a product of the mind. This only makes you sound uninformed.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Terrible analogy.
Right?
It means that only photographs exist...
This is false.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Because?
Obviously not only photographs exist. But a camera is necessary to take photographs of things. Not everything is a photograph, obviously. A photograph is a specific thing that a camera does.
That's just not obviously not only minds exist. But minds are necessary to conceive things. Not everything is a concept, obviously. Concepts are specific things that minds do.
A photograph is a [i]representation[/I]. A mind (or camera in your analogy) produces mental representations (analogous to photographs). The entire world of the camera in your analogy is comprised of photographs.
I'm not claiming that physical things don't exist. I'm claiming that a mind is necessary to make them exist for us.
According to what?
lol
According to the physical world, and my imagination.
You'd have to explain how that's working in your view, because it just seems like a completely random thing to say.
Our senses recieve patterns of data which is mentally processed. The sense data is in accord with the received patterns.
If I'm off-base, what do you mean by 'according to what?'
What is it that assigns phenomenological significance to my immediate sensory experience? The mind. Without thought/belief to mediate my raw unintelligible sensory data, there is nothing but the fleeting variegated mirage of direct existence.
I would not object to concluding/assuming that at the moment of a creatures' biological conception there is no such thing as thought/belief. However, Tabula Rasa is not a notion I would endorse. A blank slate overstates the case.
If we must speak in terms of a priori and a posteriori, then I suppose the above makes a fair point. However, I personally reject that framework as a result of it's inherent inadequacy. In fact, I reject all historical philosophical metaphysical frameworks for the very same reason. They are all based upon dichotomies such as subject/object, mental/physical, internal/external, subjective/objective, and others. None of these dichotomies can coherently arrive at a framework capable of taking proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither. Thought/belief is one such thing.
Expanding upon the commonality between all explanations of thought/belief...
All explanations of thought/belief are themselves existentially dependent upon pre-existing thought/belief. That is to say that all explanations of thought/belief are metacognitive endeavors(they require thinking about thought/belief). Thought/belief cannot be pointed at. It does not have a spatiotemporal location. So, unlike thinking about physically perceptible things, thinking about thought/belief requires quite a bit more than just brains/nervous systems replete with physiological sensory perception and the innate ability to experience the effects/affects of basic emotion(contentment/discontentment/fear).
Here's my question...
Can anyone here offer an example of any philosopher from any time period throughout human history who has drawn and maintained the actual distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief?
No. But why? I mean we all know that we do this. We're doing it now!
Because some humans - especially the Ivory Towered and religious ones - want to think of themselves as 'higher' than the 'dumb' animals. As a result, they've went to great extremes providing proof of this by arguing how animals do not think like us - cannot possibly think like us. It makes perfect sense to say such things. I mean, animals cannot think about their own pre-existing thought/belief. Animals cannot deliberately reason, suspend their judgment, conceive of novelty, etc. We can. That's just a small part of what language has helped facilitate.
But there's a big problem with this line of thinking. It does not draw and maintain the actual distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. If it did, and it did it rightly, then we would still be able to hold superiority and do so without being dead wrong about whether or not animals form thought/belief and/or the extent of which they can be said to have/hold thought/belief.
I wouldn't call the common core of all thought/belief 'primitive morality'. Primitive thought/belief? Sure. Not all thought/belief is rightfully called "morality". Rather, morality is codified thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour(thought/belief that is moral in kind).
Morality is codified moral belief. Laws.
You and I both know that the position I'm arguing for rings true in a multitude of ways and has the broadest possible scope of rightful application(s). Don't we?
:wink:
Have you come up with a coherent account of shared meaning yet? That's where we left off long ago.
No.
You never will as long as you mistakenly believe that everything that exists has a quantifiable spatiotemporal location. Truth(correspondence to actual events) doesn't. Relationships don't. The attribution of meaning doesn't. Thought/belief doesn't.
An adequate account of shared meaning depends upon knowing that.
Both a dog and a human can learn that touching fire causes pain. That is how 'shared' meaning emerges, in the sense that it is the same thought/belief being formed by different creatures. Thought/belief that is commonly formed and/or held by more than one capable creature. Typically, talk of shared meaning denotes linguistic meaning and as such it involves people drawing the same or similar enough correlations between language use and something else.
Everything ever spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered originates in/from pre-linguistic, non-linguistic thought/belief. Thought/belief autonomously emerges in simple 'form' and gains in it's complexity. Human knowledge, let us not forget, provides the strongest possible justificatory ground for our saying so, because it is an empirical manifestation of human thought/belief.
All thought/belief is meaningful to the thinking believing creature. Some thought/belief are prior to language. Some meaning is prior to language. Not all meaning is existentially dependent upon language. All thought/belief(all correlation) presupposes the existence of it's own content(regardless of subsequent further qualification). The presupposition of correspondence to actual events happens prior to language.
If the presupposition of truth(as correspondence to actual events) happens prior to language, then any and all philosophical positions arriving at and/or relying upon the contrary are wrong in a very specific sort of way.
If the attribution of meaning happens prior to language, then any and all positions arriving at and/or relying upon the contrary are wrong in a very specific sort of way.
Surely you jest.
Assigning significance is something that minds do, sure.
That's just switching the topic.
Again, it's switching to "what is it that changes focal lengths?" so that we're suddenly talking about cameras qua cameras instead.
I've had a coherent account of how meaning works for decades. I don't know if I explained it to you in any detail or not in the past.
We need to clarify, by the way, just how you're using "shared" there. We'd not be talking about different instances of the same (exact, logically identical) thing, because there are no such things in general (I'm a nominalist).
Nevermind.
Look in the cupboard for a red cup. Inside it you will find coffee. You cannot dip your finger into that red cup of coffee.
A method for what?
Establishing a minimal criterion for what counts as being a case of thought/belief, such that all known examples of thought/belief also satisfy this criterion?
No idea what that's supposed to be referring to.
In moral foundations theory (Jonathan Haidt, Craig Joseph, Jesse Graham), it's proposed that moral judgment is primarily given rise to by intuition, with reasoning playing a smaller role in most of our moral decision-making. Conscious thought-processes serve as a kind of post hoc justification of our decisions.
The theory suggests that we have unconscious intuitive heuristics which generate our reactions to morally charged-situations, and underlie our moral behavior. When people explain their moral positions, they often miss, if not hide, the core premises and processes that actually led to those conclusions.
The main evidence for the theory comes from studies of "moral dumbfounding" where people have strong moral reactions but fail to establish any kind of rational principle to explain their reaction.
You are a writing machine.
Quoting creativesoul
I admit, it is a poor choice of words, but you get what I mean.
Quoting creativesoul
The a priori/a posterior distinction has its merits in explaining some things, but I certainly don't mean to restrict the conversation to that system, (only where relevant). And you are correct to reject any historical philosophical metaphysical frameworks.
I don't believe any philosophical framework aptly takes into account any of those metaphysical dichotomies which "consist of both, and are thus... neither". The only framework that comes close, is the dialectical one, which includes movement/transition into its logic, allowing it to essentially negate the law of contradiction.
However, I don't see how we can avoid beginning at an unverifiable metaphysical premise. The necessary abstraction of concepts inevitably places us on metaphysical ground. I don't know how it is possible to nullify this problem (in totality) through any methodology.
As I see it, we are left with two choices: to keep trying to metholologically locate a non-metaphysical premise from which we can proceed with absolute certaity; or to simply accept a metaphysical premise as self-evident, and proceed methodologically to investigate its consequence. The latter is obviously naive; but the former requires blind faith in a methodology that will only have proved itself, once it has indisputably proven itself. The only other way to validate a methodology is to test it by another method. What independent method could we use to determine the effectiveness of our methodology here (not that we actually have one)? It would seem to require another method to determine that methodology . . . ad infinitum.
Quoting creativesoul
Nice point, possibly something to build upon. I'll try not to get too excited and jump the gun.
Emotional affection, at the physiological level, corresponds directly to the behavioral disposition of desire/aversion. But, at this point, I can not say whether that the valuation of behavioral disposition marks a transition into the ethical, or, rather, stands as merely an aesthetic assessment of what seems most conducive to attaining the desirable.
Consider, that early in life, the infant begins to evaluate the desirable somewhere in the interplay of her nerve stimuli, and her emotional responses. As primitive as it is, this does constitute a valuation, despite the absence of any language skills. The primitive level in which value is imposed on emotional affection does not constitute a proper ethical judgement - it is more like an observation of what seems pleasing to me, rather than a moral choice about what I ought to do.
Then we can think about the toddler who has begun to acquire language. At this point, he is being linguistically conditioned (with some corporal conditioning) so that he can be assimilated into the culture to which he belongs. It is somewhere in this process that the evaluation of his primitive valuations commences; most importantly any evaluations of his primitive valuations are primarily acquired externally from culture, and not internally as a result of primitive valuation.
I hope this takes us one step closer to adequately understanding the source of morals. I could be mistaken, it's a terrible tragedy.
I would also add: thinking about thought/belief suffers from something analogous to the "observer effect" in physics.
Quoting creativesoul
You said it. If only thinking were not so indefinitely fluid - infinite, as it were. Perhaps, then, we could approach the topic of thinking about thought/belief in a direct manner. But, as it is, we cannot directly communicate actual thinking, and thusly, we can do nothing but approach it indirectly - as thought/belief about thought/belief.
No dispute, here. I just meant to clarify your position. I would say, if there is a primitive morality, it comes well after primitive thought/belief. Hopefully we can discover approximately where that occurs.
Quoting creativesoul
Indeed! You arrogant sunuvabitch. :joke:
No, you are right...
Cameras freeze three dimensional fields of color onto two dimensional a surface.
...so, yes, you are wrong.
Quoting creativesoul
This is a very important point.
In basic terms, for the primitive human, the world has meaning in one particular or another. The introduction of language adds an entirely new dimension to the equation - a rational dimension. I, might argue, that ethical existence is not entered upon until (at least, but probably well after) the rational conscioussness is initiated through exposure to language.
We also find that the most relevant languages are not only historic, but contain historically embedded values that are determined by a completely separate dynamic, which lies far beyond the dynamic that determines primitive valuations; it is obviously more closely related to basic revaluations.
Haha...nice!
Quoting creativesoul
Would you say such a presupposition is more a matter of immediate instinct/intuition, or rational reflection/deliberation?
This sounds about right, in general, for most people in most situations. However, I do find the notion of intuition to be without a common referent that existed in it's entirety prior to our accounts of it. It's use - without delineation - leaves me wondering what the speaker is talking about. Given that it is being claimed to give rise to moral judgment, I wonder if that is indicative of a claim regarding initial emergence/source/origen of all moral judgment or if it simply points out that some moral judgment happens automatically after one has a basis of moral thought/belief from which to judge. I'm probably being a bit too picky...
If by "moral judgment" we are talking about situations when one is voicing approval/disapproval in terms of whether or not something is acceptable/unacceptable, what morally right/wrong, or even what ought and/or ought not be done, then I would agree with the underlying sentiment.
Voicing approval/disapproval is almost always grounded upon pre-existing moral thought/belief(prior to the specific situation). In non reflective situations I might even be able to argue that it is always. However, we can - and we do - sometimes change our minds about which behaviours are acceptable/unacceptable. Those situations - where we are carefully considering our own pre-existing thought/belief - can yield moral judgments that are not so unreflective. They are arrived at via reasoning(thinking about our own pre-existing thought/belief). Of course, this takes another human - in some way, shape, or form, because it takes thinking about the same things in different terms. Roughly, one must admit being mistaken, and none of us are capable of recognizing our own mistakes when left entirely to our own devices. It takes another.
I don't know about the 'heuristics' part, but aside from that I wouldn't disagree at all. I mean, that's very often the case regarding people's reactions in any emotionally charged situation regardless of the moral aspect(regardless whether or not it's about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour). I would even take that quite a bit farther and say that that's true in most everyday situations regarding almost all people's explanations regarding their own underlying 'operative' thought/belief.
Again I agree that these things happen, but I'm quite hesitant about the narrow scope of application. So, as far as evidence is concerned, it seems questionable for being used in such a specific way regarding only moral judgments as compared/contrasted to all sorts of judgments.
I think that most people in most situations can have strong reactions without knowing why and/or how they've come to have such unconscious emotional 'triggers'. All people have them at some point in time or another. I mean, that must take place prior to our taking account of it and/or ourselves.
Some people seem to be in a perpetual emotionally charged angry state; others a perpetual happy go lucky one; others are more even keeled. None of these general attitudes are always indicative of the amount of self-reflection and/or actual deliberate self-improvement work, and it is almost always difficult, that the individual has been involving in.
One has to want to do that. It does not always end well.
Not everyone is willing to or capable of doing what it takes to understand themselves. The remarkable thing, to me at least, is that the better you understand others the better you can understand yourself as well, and vice -versa. It's a self perpetuating process(pun intended).
Edited to be clear...
That's a hypothetical use of "you"... That nuance would have been much better understood had I used "one" instead of "you".
I'm certainly not sold. For that matter, I'm even less sold on the idea that the same correlations are currently being drawn between many instances of it's use on this forum and what it was meant to refer to by Kant himself.
If use of "a priori" denotes that which is necessarily presupposed for experience to even happen(the necessary and sufficient pre-conditions claimed to give rise to all experience), then we're doing nothing more than describing our own notion of "experience" in greater detail. If that notion does not include drawing a distinction between nonlinguistic thought/belief and linguistic thought/belief, then it will inevitably conflate the two.
There's no way for us to know how a bat experiences the world, if we attempt to do so by shoehorning a kind of experience that only humans can have, into a bat's world.
I'm not claiming that any dichotomy consists of both and is thus neither, although I would not disagree with such a claim... strictly and quite literally speaking.
What I'm pointing out is that all dichotomies are inherently lacking in explanatory power in the very same way. None can take account of that which consists of both sides of the dichotomy.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I don't follow you here.
Just to be clear though. I've no issue with judicious use of the true/false dichotomy. The important thing by my lights is having a good grasp upon the sort of things that can be true/false in addition to what makes them so. One's use of true/false shows one's grasp of that.
It's an aside, but I'm dying to know...
Can you demonstrate such a negation of the law of contradiction?
Just recently Janus and I were involved in a discussion about whether or not a promise could be true/false at the time of utterance. I learned something from that exchange. Promises consist of more than one thought/belief(proposition). Janus argues from a position that led to saying that one promise could be both true and false at the same time. On my view, promises are not the sort of thing that can be true/false.
P.S.
You've extracted a couple of the key points, and expressed some fairly well-grounded concerns regarding the project itself. I'm neither ignoring nor wanting to distract our attention from those by this post. Rather, I've been methodically replying to snippets in the order that they came after having read them all a few times in their entirety. So... the next post is one I'm looking forward to.
Re the principle of charity, I'm trying to figure out any way your comment might make sense in the context of understanding my comment and . . . well, I just can't figure out a way.
Glad to oblige (I find it to be a fascinating topic).
The short answer:
In the dialectical methodology, logic is not static and finite, but is in infinite motion which subsumes all potential necessity in every possible variant (of a logical system).
I will attempt to describe the basic dialectical sense. Any relation of "+A" to "-A" withdraws into the unity of "A" (as Hegel pointed out). If "A" becomes contextualized in a snapshot of propositional form (viz. as a logical relation concerning "+A", or "-A"), then it is impossible to factor "A" through the true/false dichotomy without depredating the proposition of all sense (it is analogous to using thought/belief to pin down thinking). In this sense, contradiction only occurs within the content of a proposition, and never within the defining contextual subtext (from where propositional sense is derived).
The law of contradiction, then, can be regarded as an apparatus that does not negate its opposite (by making it something else), but by necessarily defining its essence (as the antithetically opposed reflection within a rationally motivated schematic). In the dialectical approach, "+A"/"-A" does not gain its propositional sense from the contrary "-A"/"+A" (a tautological assumption), rather, from the contradictory "not 'A'"/"not '-A". Hence, the law of contradiction (that a thing cannot be simultaneously true and false, but must be one or the other) is negated by the fact that contradiction is logically precluded by necessity.
That is, within the sense of any proposition, the "either/or" does not matter since the contradictory (negative) term essentially establishes the positive existence of the interrogative object within the propositional context.
It's very stupid. :rofl:
(Add. I could care less, but, imo, theists would be wise to pursue this thread if they intend on arguing with atheists.)
Let us, for the sake of novelty, momentarily set aside the notions of metaphysical and non-metaphysical. Those categories are a consequence of inadequate dichotomy. As such, they are contaminated in the same way that logical notation/transcription/translation is. The lack of explanatory power inherently within dichotomy has been transmitted/transferred into the categories.
That's step one, and it makes perfect sense given what's been argued for thus far, particularly the bits about the shortcomings of all dichotomies. They quite simply cannot take into account anything that consists of both sides of the dichotomy.
Conventionally, we know that metaphysics is the branch of philosophy whose adherents concern themselves with what exists and/or the nature thereof. There are virtually countless different stances all of which revolve around two basic categories. That which is dependent upon the mind, and that which is not. This places the notion of mind dependence and/or mind independence front and center. It is of utmost importance for it is the measure of all things further considered when one is using a framework resting it's laurels upon that dichotomy. So, what counts as a mind is paramount to such subsequent thinking. That is also where the dichotomy of subjective/objective arises from. The former being all things that are mind dependent and the latter being all things that are not.
Let's pause here for second...
If all minds are existentially dependent upon thought/belief, then we better make sure that we have thought/belief right.
So... it's the method of approach that matters. What steps do we take, which things ought we consider, what can we know and how can we know it when it comes to thought and belief itself? Are thought and belief things? What sorts of things could they be? Do they exist? Are they real? In what way do they exist. How can we establish some sound foundation?
I chose to first look towards statements.
How can we avert the Notion of: man as the measure of all things?
I'll not get into the negation. Thanks for taking the time to set it out.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
By not saying it?
Relevance?
:lol:
Np. It's flatulence.
Quoting creativesoul
Ok. Let's get back on topic. We only need to satisfy those categories insofar as they satisfy us, and I think you and I both know that my indirect, flanking strateegery will not permit for any nonsense, as it is completely responsive to the creative and the originally derived.
That's not a bad summary of pre linguistic thought/belief as it pertains to morals.
The last statement seems to be claiming or at least has the consequence of claiming that all evaluations of primitive thought/belief are primarily acquired from culture, and not as a result of the primitive thought/belief.
Do I understand you correctly?
We are on same page, same sentence.
This is the best time to disagree.
Seriously, it's not just a joke.
We could always be more direct, I suppose.
Do you agree that humans are capable of thinking and/or believing prior to language acquisition?
Yes I do
Quoting creativesoul
Can we discuss this further?
Let us approach it as a live dialectic, a proven methodology, you ask the questions and I will answer. It is an experiment, so it won't be emotionally charged. We can assume our role in the context of experiment, and discourse therefrom.
Why, of cours3!!!
I would amend this position by assuming that it isn't so universal. That is, not all evaluation of primitive thought/belief are primarily acquired from culture. But I might argue that the most significant which carry through to maturity are, indeed.
Culture is existentially dependent upon individual pre-linguistic thought/belief.
I cannot seem to reconcile that with...
I readily agree that all evaluations of primitive thought/belief are primarily acquired from culture. Evaluations of pre-linguistic thought/belief are existentially dependent upon language.
I don't necessarily agree. I believe it is an entity beyond the individual. Just try to change culture through your purest conviction. Won't happen, not like a conviction could change your personal belief.
More likely, culture will change your individual convictions.
Hmmmmm...I dont know if culture is so much , determined by individuals, as much as that it is determined by an intentional conformity to the interests of the culture.
(Add. I would call such intentionality non moral, or one factor in the source of morals)
Anyway, let's circle back to the moral thought/belief aspect. Particularly, I think that the role of language in moral thought/belief could be set out further.
We can agree that culture is existentially dependent upon many different individuals' thought/belief, can't we?
I can agree upon that. Let's leave the individual's influence on culture on the margin for now, may become relevant later.
So, on my view all moral thought/belief is thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. If the converse is also true, if all thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour is moral thought/belief, then we arrive at moral thought/belief prior to language. However, morals are quite a bit different than mere moral thought/belief.
The social aspect is certainly relevant.
I'm following.
Morals consist of thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. They are the basis for morality. They vary according to cultural and/or familial particulars.
This is true of all morals. We agree here don't we?
I cannot see how morality comes prior to cultural indoctrination. And in fact, I cannot see the arrival to ethical existence prior to the ability of the individual to separate herself from the culture into which she has been indoctrinated (even if, at that point, she chose to abide with the cultural indoctrination).
This is just my hypothesis.
Indeed.
I feel we have made progress in a way that is rarely seen on TPF (add. as insignificant as it might be).
Progress is good, especially considering the very nuanced side issues concerning the ontology of thought/belief and reason we've been also contemplating here.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
We may be misunderstanding one another slightly. Although, I don't think it's that important. Just to make sure of that:Morality, on my view, follows from the conventional definition of morality as set out by the SEP... the rules of acceptable/unacceptable behaviour.
So in that sense, morality is the tool used for cultural indoctrination. On second thought, that may be imparting intention/purpose where none exists. Initially I mean. Surely some do use morality as a tool to indoctrinate youth, for the purposes of such.
Some religions have holy books which nearly make this claim outright.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Is this akin to a rough criterion for moral agency?
Thinking about one's own adopted moral thought/belief?
You are correct in this point. Just consider me thorough. I just want to be sure we have firmly arrived into ethical existence before we finally determine that we have exhausted all the relevant potential sources of moraliy.
I would argue that the indoctrination of culture is value charged with a preexisting morality, but the problem is that it is entirely accidental. There is no possibility of decision here. I would say that the ethical doesn't actually exist until responsibility is assumed by a deciding agent (no matter how insignificant or illusory). But it is not the responsibility that places one into ethical existence, rather it is the acceptance of the role as the deciding agent that places one there. The ethical, as it were, circles back upon the individual through culture, and places him into an immediate relation to the decision - it is an existential tier above that of primitive thought/belief and basic reflective assessments of one's experience.
Oh.
:wink:
When you put it like that, you guide our thoughts about "ethical existence" through 'the realm' of logical possibility. Perhaps "domain" is more apt and/or understandable as it usually applies to the subject of discourse.
We could imagine all sorts of potential sources of morality, and as long as we are sensible in terminological use and consistent throughout we could arrive at all sorts of answers to the question. In this way, we could arrive at different 'possible' sources of morals. That would be exhaustive of potential sources if we're using the term "potential" as a synonym for logically possible.
However, I do not find logical possibility alone very convincing... not at all. So, I hope that that is not the case here.
However, if you mean to direct our attention to the importance that conscious deliberation of one's own (mostly)adopted worldview(including the inculcation aspect of morals) has upon one's character, then you'll receive nothing but complete and total agreement from me.
I was going to ask about "ethical existence" but you've answered while I was still formulating this reply. That's an interesting position to put forth. I'm going to carefully consider what I think it means prior to saying more.
:smile:
You have set forth a common goal. I will do the same. :up:
Two ways of arguing much the same thing.
I have no issue at all with that criterion for what counts as ethical existence. I only balk at the 'accidental' aspect, but would readily accept that too, if you're saying that the indoctrination of culture upon the individual - as a thing in and of itself - emerged independently of and/or without deliberative purpose. If we're arguing that it began prior to our awareness that it was happening, and is accidental in that specific sense...
That would place it squarely in the domain of that which existed in it's entirety prior to our account of it.
Yes.
On a critical reading, there's something a bit confusing here for me though.
If A does not exist until B and B is insufficient for A then A is existentially dependent upon more than just B. If C results in A and C is not existentially dependent upon B then A is existentially dependent upon C and we've arrived at self contradiction with the first premiss. Either the first premiss is false, or there's an equivocation of "ethical" such that "the ethical doesn't actually exist" is not talking about ethical existence.
One can accept the role as a deciding agent without accepting responsibility. One can also accept responsibility without accepting they had a choice in what to do.
So, on second thought, despite the initial 'feeling' of agreement without issue regarding the criterion for ethical existence, I suppose there is a bit of an issue for me. All the rest concerning indoctrination existing in it's entirety prior to our awareness and/or accounts of it still stands strong for me though...
No one likes being harmed by another.
The origen of morals must include all three, one's adopted morality via indoctrination, one's own reflective considerations of that, and one's own pre-linguistic thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. Morals, however aren't formed/held until the indoctrination begins.
"visceral" :lol: . Thank you. I know it's not the most popular philosophical form in this day and age. So, I appreciate that you have the philosophical versatility to look beyond my unfettered lexicon.
And, floweriness is a very apt description of my philosophy: for I intended to plant my ideas, cultivate and grow them, and finally watch them die.
Quoting creativesoul
This is my meaning.
I would argue that this pre-existing entity, although only quasi-ethical (due to its inability for conscious deliberation) provides the necessary environment to cultivate proper ethical existence (qua. conscious deliberation of the moral agent).
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Quoting creativesoul
Permit me to put this logic into the terms of the discussion. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.
1) If the ethical (A) does not exist prior to cultural indoctrination (B), and cultural indoctrination is insufficient for the ethical, then the ethical is dependent upon more than just cultural indoctrination.
2) if moral agency results in the ethical without cultural indoctrination, then the ethical is existentially dependent on moral agency, and this contradicts the first premise.
You are correct. It definitely requires a closer look and some rethinking.
Quoting creativesoul
That was a very confusing use of language on my part. Let me restate it.
Perhaps it would have been better to say:
"the ethical only exists as a potentiality, until direct responsibility is assumed by a moral agent (no matter how insignificant or illusory the agent)."
Here, it is possible to conceive of the ethical as coming into being through cultural indoctrination. In becoming, the ethical is presupposed in cultural indoctrination, but until the ethical manifests itself in the live decision of moral agency, it is in a necessarily latent mode, which is quasi-ethical (or the ethical as concept), and not ethical existence proper (as moral being).
It may be that physical harm and ethical harm differ qualitatively, and while it is possible for them to correlate in some way or another, it is not necessary. They each maintain their sense independent of the other.
Quoting creativesoul
Indeed, the indoctrination and ethical assimilation into culture, combined with one's enduring pre-linguistic assessments of the desirable, adequately set the stage for the moral agent to appear. Somewhere in this dynamic comes, what I like to call "the original sin": the knowledge of good and evil. The role of the moral agent is most decisive in the transition from ethical becoming to ethical being. Is it, then, possible to say that the "source of morals" can be included under the category of becoming, and "existing morals" under the category of being.
Prior to ethical existence, there are many accidental factors that come into play. But once I have assumed the ethically deliberative consciousness, all meaning comes through my decisiveness. I no longer am concerned about my level of conformity to cultural norms, nor about my relation to the desirable. In ethical existence, I am no longer focused outward on the world: as it seems to be, and as it should be; rather, I turn inwardly towards myself: as I seem to be, and as I should be. For instance there is a sharp distinction between: the world is a scary place, it should be a peaceful place and I am afraid, I should be brave.
I agree with the sentiment but would simplify our account. Perhaps it would be better to say that the inculcation/indoctrination does not 'provide' anything for it is not the sort of thing that is capable of providing. Rather, indoctrination/inculcation is the affect/effect that the cultural environment has upon it's individual members, and moral agency requires indoctrination/inculcation in order to have something to think about.
So, regardless of our different parsings... I think we both agree that moral agency depends upon(amongst other things) thinking about one's own mostly adopted moral belief(of which morals in the common sense are a kind). Moral agency is existentially dependent upon carefully evaluating one's own pre-existing moral foundations/morality/moral belief, and that foundation is almost entirely cultural.
It seems that simplification requires more words on my view???
:razz:
Ouch.
:wink:
You know I'm going to want to reframe this, right?
What are we referring to, as precisely as possible, by 'the ethical'?
Aren't we just talking about specific kinds of thought/belief; those that give rise to moral agency?
I think I avoid the notion of potentiality and replace it with use of existential dependency and actual existence. So, instead of saying that the ethical is presupposed within cultural indoctrination, I would say that ethical thought/belief and the moral agency that emerges from it are both existentially dependent upon first having something to think about(indoctrination/inculcation of moral belief/morality).
I would readily concur. However, ethical harm would surely be a harder thing to pin down and/or find widespread agreement upon.
It's possible to say whatever we want. Is it helpful? Good/evil are a couple of days too old, ya know? There are way too many religious connotations and/or theistic baggage for my tastes. Surely we can do ethics in better ways without depending upon such unwarranted belief systems setting the stage for us, can't we?
That's the whole point of setting out the universal common denominators.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Regardless of one's moral thought/belief at this time of maturity?
All this unnecessary thrashing around is muddying the waters. Physical harm causes physical pain and suffering. Emotional harm causes emotional pain and suffering. they are both of them unethical. What's the problem?
No thrashing.
:wink:
Just waiting for a distinction between the two kinds of harm. Ethical harm seems to be a notion which follows from one's own pre-existing moral thought/belief. That's problematic, to me at least.
Certainly. I argue for universally shared(common to everyone) thought/belief about exactly that. No one likes being harmed by another. That is thought/belief that is moral - in kind - on my view.
Earlier you mentioned the relevance of moral feelings to the source of morals.
I'd like to broach that aspect. Could you begin?
I would not disagree with that. If we are to take account of moral thought/belief in a manner that is amenable to evolution, it must be that way.
Our moral feelings are much more complicated. I'm sure you agree.
Yes I agree. Our moral feelings are not "raw" or merely instinctive affects, but culturally mediated, conceptually, linguistically and narrationally elaborated affective responses.
A proper account would need to be able to parse these out, wouldn't you agree?
I was only speaking poetically. Oops
Quoting creativesoul
Moral beliefs are certainly informed by language. But, it would seem that moral feelings are a deeper matter. A moral feeling is not simply some capricious attitude formulated by reason, rather, it is a deeply personal conviction that is not always receptive to the notion of opposing moral beliefs.
Poetic philosophy tends towards equivocation and/or multiplying unnecessary entities.
Some.
Some.
Quoting Janus
Some
Quoting Janus
Some moral feelings are informed by language. Some moral beliefs are informed by language.
Quoting Janus
Moral feelings and moral beliefs need further parsing. Not all are informed by language use.
It's a complex, and that's why I have objected to the assertions of others that it is merely a matter of personal preference, or entirely subjective.
I would disagree and say that when it comes to language users all moral feelings are informed by culture (language in the broadest sense I outlined above). I don't think it is entirely appropriate to speak of moral feelings in relation to pre-linguistic or non-linguistic beings. And how much less so to speak of moral thoughts or beliefs.
All moral things share a common core of different elements. Moral feelings are those about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. Moral thought... the same. Moral belief... the same. Moral discourse... the same.
What counts as "moral" on your view?
Certainly one can concern themselves with behaviour toward others without being able to say that. One could realize that what they've done harms another without being concerned about it in the sense of moral concern that arises from complex language use.
I didn't suggest that.
Quoting creativesoul
They are about behaviors that others would be affected by if they were aware of the behavior. I qualified the statement with other's awareness, because people commonly feel guilty about things they have done that no one knows about, if they think that others would find the behavior reprehensible.
All moral feelings(feelings about behaviour towards others) are informed by culture?
A moral lesson?
Not by your standard of "moral"...
And yet, it is.
This is a good chance to point out that the deeper the feeling of conviction over a moral thought/belief, the more personal it seems to become. It is reasonable to assume, at certain level, that the individual makes ethical judgments due to the obligation of personal duty, as opposed to any obligatory social norms.
Pre-linguistic beings can probably (we don't really know) do something that we might characterize as thinking or believing, but it would certainly not amount to holding thoughts or beliefs. This is really about nuances of definition and what we might think are the most usefult and different ways to define terms like "having thoughts", "thinking", and so on. The salient point is that thinking and believing and feeling are no longer the same for a language competent being (and I mean language in the broadest sense as I outlined above).
No idea what you are getting at here.
Linguistic competency is not existentially dependent upon human thought/belief.
That is the consequence of what you're putting forth. Reductio Ad Absurdum is grounds for outright rejection.
Having and/or holding thoughts differs from forming them. I'm loose with language in that regard.
:worry:
I would argue that the categories of morality each pertain to distinct aspects. If nothing else, moral thought/belief is predominantly developed within the constraints of reason; whereas moral feeling disregards reason (in a sense) and is arrived at by an irrational commitment to the good.
"I'm right, you're wrong."
I didn't say it was.
Quoting creativesoul
One can (presumably) visualize a tree without being a competent language user. If we can see them we can visualize (recall the seeing of) them, and we can also get the naming intention behind repeatedly making a sound and pointing to a tree. I don't see what point your are trying to make.
I concur.
Well, I think the clarity and depth of your thought would benefit from tightening up your language.
,Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I agree, because all the important social norms are matters of life and death which the individual can easily get if they are capable of being concerned about their own well-being and safety
and are also able to empathize. Once a certain level of ethical sophistication is reached the contextual logic of ethics and morality is internalized, and the individual becomes properly socialized as opposed to being more or less sociopathic.
Quoting creativesoul
The internalization of social norms, I would attribute to inculcation/indoctrination. This is where the youngster learns the basic game of ethics, so to speak. But it is the most superficial level of ethical existence.
The deeper one is submerged into ethical existence, the less relevent social norms become. The deeper the ethical existence, the greater the potential for sociopathy.
I agree with your first paragraph, but not with the second. I think sociopathy is on account of distorted or absent moral feeling; the inability to empathize sufficiently or at all. I don't believe sophisticated defenses of ethical positions such as that it is OK to murder, rape, and so on are possible in those who actually care enough about others to qualify as socialized individuals. Which is not to say that you cannot act as though you are properly socialized, i.e. care about others even if you are not and do not, but I would not count that as a "deep ethical existence". I think the latter is simply impossible without the requisite accompanying feelings.
I'll get back to where we were momentarily...
I understand where you are coming from, and I don't want to digress too much but... You are speaking about very ordinary conditions. The more subjective ethical judgement becomes, the more complicated it gets.
Consider when the socio-ethical obligation permits sociopathic behavior, such as going to war (to essentially murder for the state). How do we account for that? Especially after we factor in the conscientious dissenter, who makes the more sociopathic choice to rebel against the system, not for himself or for another, but by the sheer strength of his commitment to an ethical principle.
We're talking about the source/origen of morals. The discourse has moved to talk about morals in terms of moral thought/belief and what counts as that. The criterion can account for all morals. Your criterion for what counts as being moral(in kind) cannot be substituted in many instances of the use of "moral" when it's referring to kinds. Therefore, it's inadequate in explanatory power. The criterion being used exhausts the one you've put forth and effectively passes the test of salva veritate that your proposed criterion fails.
So, the point here is that you're using an inherently inadequate criterion for what counts as being "moral". There's another as well.
Quoting Janus
This is to say that there is no thought/belief at all(period) unless the candidate forming, having, and/or holding thought/belief is competent with language. That is to say that all thought/belief is existentially dependent upon competent language use. It only follows that there is no thought/belief formation prior arriving at the level of one's mastery of language that you deem competent. That would be to admit that there were no thought/belief necessary for simple language use such as first learning the names of things. It only follows that the very first case of competent language use preceded the very first case of thought/belief formation. The very first case of one speaking in clear meaningful common language preceded one's very first thought.
That is impossible.
That's just a quick and dirty run down regarding the consequences of what you're putting forth as criterion for what counts as "moral" and what counts as "thought" or "belief". It's all unacceptable.
Some moral feelings and beliefs, perhaps the ones that you're vaguely referencing, are existentially dependent upon competent language use. We've already begun to discuss these kinds. However, they are not the first kinds. Thus, they're relevant to an overall understanding of moral thought/belief. They are not an example of the first ones. I asked you about the feelings, because that is where we are in terms of the evolution of thought/belief into morals.
That's a great summary of how we have justified the premise from which we have been building. And I think we've made some decent progress.
Yes. It seems so.
If I could buy you a drink, I would.
How about I just have drink and consider it equal. :wink:
Although it does not yet seem germane, it may become so later. Just to be clear, on my view a thought/belief is justified if it is well grounded. Being well grounded does not require being argued for and/or convincing anyone else. Hence, a justified belief does not require convincing anyone else either. This makes perfect sense in light of each and every paradigm shift.
But yes... I'm attempting to remain coherent.
Cheers.
:cool:
Definitely. If it does not become so after everything has been said, then we are doing something wrong.
:blush:
I will add that this is to be considered in contrast to active thinking, which can, at best, be approximated through the notion of thought/belief.
To circle back to the point I'm making: once thought/belief is awakened to the ethical imperative of culture, then all subsequent talk of morality is necessarily predicated on the infrastructure of thought/belief.
So when I say that moral feeling is deeper than moral belief, mean to point at a qualitative shift, in which the landscape of moral belief is swallowed up and vanishes into an acute ethical conviction.
The toughest part of using thought/belief - as a foundational criterion - is being able to effectively account for all the different ones by virtue of translating them all into terms of the content of the correlation themselves. I myself am not even close to being sold that I am capable of doing so.
Work in process.
Give me a demonstrative example, then.
Quoting creativesoul
I haven't said that and nor does what I have said entail that. Again you are confusing yourself with your sloppy terminology and reading. I have already acknowledged that we could reasonably say that something we might think of as thinking and/or believing is possible pre-linguistically.
I didn't mean to imply that, I was just bringing up a point I'm having a difficulty understanding.
Quoting Janus
My point in bring up the conscientious objector is: 1)societal morals are practicalogical; 2)that individual ethical commitments constitute a much greater reality to the moral agent (in that they are not based on utility, but principle); and 3) that the individual commitment is absolute, and has greater existential weight, in contrast to the relativistic societal mandate.
Quoting Janus
So, which is it?
I believe in you. Just don't try to convince me. :cool:
Some morals are the results of lessons. You know, the moral of the story...
The Fox and the Grapes is not about behaviour towards others. There are all sorts of morally relevant thoughts and beliefs that are about one's own behaviour and it's affect/effect upon onself. Those are not concerning behaviour towards others. They are moral thought/belief nonetheless.
Yeah yeah yeah...
:yum:
Before you know it, you'll be on board...
You know I'm a sucker for a nicely wound thread. :scream:
(Add. I've been waiting to use the screamface for a while now.)
We aught get back to the distinction between ethical thought/belief and adopted pre-reflective.
I agree that societal morals are "practicalogical" (I take you to mean 'pragmatic'). The question is as to whether they serve power elites or everyone. Going to war over ideology or to gain economic and territorial advantage, or out of an anxious, even paranoid, desire to preemptively strike is not morally sound, in my view.
I also agree that a sufficiently intelligent,sophisticated and thoughtful individual should have her own reasoned ethical commitments.
I don't, however, see the individual commitment as absolute. The individual's ethical commitments are always answerable to the most intelligent, sophisticated, and thoughtful inter-subjective consensus. Also, I think it's just a fact that the community has "greater existential weight" (insofar as I can make sense of that notion) than the individual. If it doesn't then there is something terribly wrong with the most intelligent, sophisticated and thoughtful strata of a society. In other words the collective ethical consensus must in that case be motivated by something corrupt.
That is only true if their ethical commitment is predicated on the authority of another. And, then the commitment is indeed rather capricious, in that it lies outside the jurisdiction of the immediate decision of the ethical agent.
I can't deny that you may be laying out a sad fact of societal ethics. If I were to place it in a single concept, it would be "ideology"
When it comes to the most significant moral proscriptions; you shall not murder, rape, torture and so on, there is really nothing to think about, anyway. It is only in relation to moral subtleties that much thought is required. And quite often that consists in apprising yourself of the facts involved in situations, anyway, rather than determining in prinicple what is right and what is wrong
Societal ethics are very closely aligned to appearances, or how it seems to be for another. Whereas, the ethical existence of the individual is focused on how closely do I appear to align with how I should be (as in not a murderer, not a rapist, &c.); here, society has no bearing on my ethical status.
I would not consider anything ideologically based to be a basis for good societal ethics.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I disagree because it is the negative effects that such actions will inevitably have on any society, on others who matter to you, that is the reason those actions are wrong. Of course they may also negatively impact you if you commit them, but only insofar as you are a socially concerned and motivated person and not a sociopath.
So you're ok with the idea that there can be thinking/believing without thought/belief?
Are you just objecting to my use of "having" thought/belief? If so that's a bit petty considering the account I have to offer, don't you think?
But if you are generating your ethical judgments from the utilitarian principle, then all that needs happen is for the utility to shift (whether in perception or reality), and so much for the decisive ethical agent. But in the sociopathical delusion of the ethically convicted one, abides an unalterable principle, which no reason or societal authority can hope to budge.
The Fox and the Grapes is a story that teaches a moral lesson.
You're quibbling over criterion. You've made a universal claim about what counts as "moral". That claim contradicts actual conventional and common use.
You've also made a universal claim about no thought/belief being prior to competent language use.
You've also claimed that thinking/believing could happen prior to language.
These are not problems with my reading comprehension.
@creativesoul
As much as I hate to, perhaps we should all rewatch our favorite movie: A Clockwork Orange.
Unshakable certainty(conviction) in one's own thought/belief is not always 'a bad thing'. It is certainly not enough for one to be a sociopath. All sociopaths may have such conviction, but not everyone with such conviction is a sociopath.
Here we're getting into the realm of that which did not exist in it's entirety prior to our account of it. Such is true of many common notions, including many used in ethical/moral discourse.
From yet another perspective you could say they have their source in pre-human instinctive social behavior and experience. Those perspectives are not necessarily incompatible, or they only seem incompatible, because they talk past one another.
You're running different issues together.
I work from a criterion for thought/belief which is universal. There are no examples to the contrary.
As far as the rest goes, we're talking about a source of all morals. The origen of every single one. Different perspectives may arrive at different answers, and indeed those answers are not necessarily incompatible. However, their compatibility requires a framework that can effectively exhaust them all. Hence, my universal criterion for what counts as both "moral" and "thought/belief".
Does that help you to understand where I'm coming from?
You are correct. I only intended to use the sociopath as an extreme example, in order to illustrate that sociopathy can be found in societal ethics equally as much.
Quoting creativesoul
Indeed. Thing's are not always what they at first appear to be. Sometimes you have to smash it to pieces and reconstruct it, other times you have to throw it far into the distance and rediscover it. Philosophy is so versatile in its methodology, it is rendered useless.
I bet there are at least 3 more Kubrick films in that top twenty. :grin:
And just what is that criterion?
Philosophy has been relegated as "dead" as a result of specialization and all of the irresolvable seemingly astoundingly ridiculous things that philosophy proper has arrived at.
It's still quite relevant. Ethics in particular. Applied, that is... right?
All thought/belief consist entirely of correlations drawn between different things. All thought/belief are meaningful to the thinking/believing creature. All thought/belief presupposes it's own correspondence to that which has happened... somewhere along 'the line'.
Those are three basic statements about thought/belief in general. The first is the criterion you've asked about.
Indeed. Here, possibly?
We're moving in that direction already!
:wink:
It’s an example of cognitive dissonance. The moral is to not lie to ourselves? What does it matter if we lie to ourselves if there are no other selves? In any case, we’d only lie to ourselves in this way because we have an image of ourselves that we’re interested in maintaining in relation to others.
A story of moral sour grapes might be something like a wolf (a more social species) eating a whole rabbit by itself and not sharing it with the pack. Because the wolf has a strong self image of strictly adhering to pack norms, not to mention that pack exile could mean death or at least no longer having the potential for gene propagation, the wolf chooses to believe that he wasn’t at fault and blames the rabbit for being a little sour, and claiming that none of the other wolves would have wanted it. It was actually virtuous of him to not subject the pack to the sourness of the rabbit, so he comes to believe and claim.
I think that intuition can be both instinctual and conditioned by culture, and we can also intentionally condition ourselves.
To be clear...
This entire project - the setting out of the origen of all morals - must be approached from a method lacking moral value judgment. This is a meta-ethical discussion. All morals must be accounted for.
With that in mind...
I'm not offering assent/dissent and/or agreement/disagreement of the moral value. I'm not condoning/condemning. I'm not offering a value judgment at all. Rather, The Fox and the Grapes is a fable that teaches a moral lesson, or so it is said. It's one of those stories that after reading it, a teacher will often ask "So, what's the moral of the story?"
The specifics do not matter here. What does matter is what that particular example has in common with each and every other example called "moral". It's about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour, and often it can also be about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. That's what all things "moral" have in common that makes them so. There are no exceptions. I'm not making this up. I'm not defining this into existence. I'm not assuming what's at issue.
Rather, I'm taking proper account of what counts as being "moral". You example fits in perfectly, just like all the rest. It's deduction, not induction. We look at all the examples. We remove all of that which is subject to individual particulars. We look at what's left and assess it's relevance/adequacy for deducing a universal criterion.
That which is moral is always about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behavior.
Moral - in kind - as compared/contrasted to moral judgment which has it's counterpart immoral and is a synonym for "good", "right", etc.
Follow me?
I would agree. Like thought/belief, there are different 'levels' of evolutionary complexity.
At a certain level, the explanatory usefulness of the role of evolution in the source of morals becomes exhausted. In all subsequent discourse, the role of evolution is automatically implied as a necessary factor in the source of morals. Any further talk of it is redundant.
Certainly. But, let us not make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse, or counting chooks before they hatch.
We'll have all the time in the world to talk about that when we get there. It's about much more than the role of evolution. I don't talk in such terms to begin with. There's much more to it than meets the eye...
All morals rest their laurels upon rudimentary thought/belief. Being used and/or being useful doesn't amount to much at all on my view. It's the goal that matters most, and that holds good in ethics as well. Being used in the best way known is the aim.
Utilization of that knowledge(the origen of all thought/belief, including but certainly not limited to thought/belief that is moral in kind), goes far beyond mere talk of 'the role of evolution'.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Indeed. Our account must be amenable to evolution. That's all. That's merely one standard of many measures that need be taken. Guidelines to meet and/or exceed.
You still open to the idea of existential quantification?
Indeed. I just wish to ensure we are primed for when that time arrives.
The complexity of thought/belief at the rudimentary, basic, and/or foundational level must evolve in terms amenable to evolution. Language is covered already. Seamlessly, or at least as seamlessly as possible...
That's it.
Agree?
If so... we're done talking about the role of evolution.
Yes, I think it is worthy of investigation.
I'm primed :fire:
I asked because I've already been using it throughout. Universal claims, while being prone to reductio, are nonetheless the strongest possible justificatory ground(in terms of arguing for warrant), especially when they are verifiable/falsifiable. If there are no known examples to the contrary, but there are examples, then there are no empirical reasons for dissent.
That's exactly what's been going on.
In between other things, that is...
I want to return to the discussion when it pertained to the distinction between moral thought/belief and ethical thought/belief. We were not finished with the nuance in that regard.
Particularly, the bit about considering others.
To what extent must one consider an other in order for her/him to be thinking ethically about the other?
I had that feeling.
You may find this interesting, or you may not. The written word alone cannot tell me - yet - about the amount of sincerity and/or actual interest you have here. I'll tell you anyway.
My thought/belief about government - as an entity - is largely along the lines of Thomas Paine. Particularly regarding it's responsibility to it's citizens. There's also much to be said regarding conflicts of interest between the wealthiest people and the poorest people. Further talk about what counts as worthy of holding public office, particularly when it comes to the candidate's own historical record and/or personal vested interests. This line of thinking leads us to overturning specific pieces of legislation(and/or Supreme Court decisions) and along with them some mistakenly set precedent(s).
Common Sense.
Samurai the snowball while stepping aside...
I tend to get myself in trouble with such talk...
:joke:
I'm too lazy to lead a revolution. Besides that I've got too much else to do! :wink:
And it can be 'validated', so to speak... in conventional layperson/psychological terms. There is plenty of evidence to verify/falsify the claim.
I thought the point of your sour grapes example, in the context of its use, had to do with trying to establish the universal criterion of weather or not morals require other sentient beings.
Maybe I misconstrued the point. In any case, grapes aren’t sentient. What do you think the moral of the sour grapes fable is, just out of curiosity?
I think they do. Rudimentary level pre-linguistic thought/belief aren't sufficient. Having morals requires understanding them to some - at a minimum - basic extent. Understanding them requires thinking about the meaning. The story is comprised of thought/belief statements. All thought/belief statements are meaningful. Thinking about the underlying meaning requires thinking about thought/belief statements. Thinking about thought/belief statements requires common written language. Common written language requires another human. Humans are sentient beings. Morals require other sentient beings.
All use of "requires/require" can be replaced with "is/are existentially dependent upon"...
Is it pretend? In any case, it only matters in relation to other beings of its group. If It doesn’t belong to a group then there is no moral. If a man living alone in the forest hates the fruit he can’t reach it is of no consequence to anyone else, or to himself.
No, it's not pretend...
It's the groundwork upon which a teacher can plant the seeds of practical thought. How to get what one could not first attain/acquire...
Don't be like the fox.
Or alternatively, when faced with an unattainable goal, accept it. Again...
Don't be like the fox.
It's all about the attitude!
Quoting praxis
We're in agreement here regarding the need for others.
But a man in forest - all alone - would not have the fable to begin with. A baby in a forest will not ever become a man. So, it's a moot point. We're interdependent social creatures by our very nature... necessarily so.
I thought everyone had read Aesop's fables... My naivety rears it's head once again.
Don't you have similar moral lessons in your worldview?
Giving up may not have been a mistake. Further effort could have been better spent simply looking for low lying fruit elsewhere.
The mistake was choosing to believe a fiction. That kind of behavior can have serious negative consequences within a group.
The implication is that if you remove yourself from all other sentient beings you will still have a moral life?
Alternatively...
Did you miss that part?
I'll grant this for no other reason than it doesn't matter. We're not deliberating - yet - which moral thought/belief is best given some specific situation or other. We're getting there.
Do you follow me?
I'm just taking account of the fable and it's moral lesson. The only reason it needed to be invoked here was as an exception to a criterion for what counts as "moral" - in kind. A criterion for what counts as being moral - in kind - that claims that all morals are about considering behaviour towards others is rendered inadequate by virtue of conflicting with the way things are. It cannot take proper account of The Fox and the Grapes. That's a story with a moral. That moral is about one's own thought/belief and/or attitude. It helps promote self-reflection. It's not about considering behaviour towards others. Thus, the proposed criterion is rejected as inadequate, insufficient and/or lacking explanatory power. It could easily and sensible be called "false"...
Some morals are about considering behaviour towards others. Not all.
That's just a bit of the further parsing that needed to be done earlier...
I've been done with that for a while. So agreed.
I'm only loosely acquainted with him. Maybe you can clue me in.
Roughly...
A motivational speaker often accredited with being very influencial in both the American and French Revolutions.
A rabble-rouser...
Google Thomas Paine's Common Sense. I think it's readily available.
Common Sense, I'll check her out.
That is something that we can now make a distinction about, but only because the variables have been existentialized, right?
Ethical thought/belief it would seem, pertains to the stages of prelinguistic thought/belief and cultural indoctrination (predominantly the latter). It opens up onto ethical existence for the individual.
In ethical existence, the individual internalizes ethical thought/belief. Somewhere here, in the internalization of ethical thought/belief, is where moral thought/belief should first appear (I can't exactly pin point it yet).
At a the most superficial level, moral thought/belief would be likely to appear identical to the ethical thought/belief from which it was derived. But the deeper one sinks into moral thought/belief (i.e. the more serious his conviction and responsibility become), the more ethical existence becomes a reality for him... the more likely (but not necessarily) his morality will come to differ from the ethical thought/belief from which it is derived.
It seems reasonable to suggest that at a deep enough level of moral thought/belief, it ceases to be a cognitive process, and becomes more akin to feeling and intuition. If this is accepted, then the more that ethical thought/belief is internalized, the more irrational it becomes.
I love it. Thanks for the challenges! I'll think on that.
Thanks!
It's a great thing when philosophy is done right, right?
Love me some Aesop. Should be mandatory reading for all TPF members. :cool:
I didn't say we were doing anything right. Even if we aren't.
:rofl:
I wanted to comment on this...
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
If we equate being rational to being consciously thought about and we suppose that thought/belief somehow loses it's rational aspect when it becomes an unconscious operator.
I would disagree with both of those presuppositions.
I don't know about all of that. Just a few examples of morals.
I like the aesthetic feel of this...
I want to attempt a translation in my own terms. Hopefully it will be as well received as the last.
I like this question.
The most basic mode of ethical thought, probably as you pointed out: "[is] about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour." To be thinking ethically about the other, would seem, at minimum, to require an ethical assessment of another in those general terms. But I wouldn't call this a moral judgement, for, in a sense, moral judgment is an ethical assessment of oneself.
Your interpretation is necessary for me. It helps me to know we are on the same page. Also, you are probably much more intelligent than me. :grin:
:smile:
I wouldn't go that far.
"By trying to please everybody, he had pleased nobody, and lost his Ass besides."
:rofl:
Fine then, just the last sentence, forget the first two. :wink:
I'm not suggesting thought/belief loses its rationality, that is a necessary aspect of thought/belief. I am suggesting, upon reaching a certain intensity of moral thought/belief, it vanishes into/becomes subdued by/is superseded by irrational moral feeling/intuition - something like a second nature.
:rofl:
I just assume I'm always doing everything wrong, especially when it seems right. But wait...
that seems right, so I guess that's wrong too.
Quoting creativesoul
This is the only necessary qualification for us to proceed.
Quoting creativesoul
Let's call the premise "the qualification". No need to further qualify. Now we can quantify the variables in relation to the constant. We are now as unjustifiably committed to the method (not to imply it is unwarranted by the power of it own device) as to the self-evident premise (which is warranted by the methodological schematic) -
we can assume it exists (V).
Quoting creativesoul
One method of quantification that fits into the overal methodological schematic of existential quantification.
There's more. . .
(If nothing else, this is demonstrating that agreement upon a methodology is imperative to further philosophical discourse.)
We have no choice but to accept the fact. In theory, cognitive dissonance can be positive or negative so choosing a fiction may not be the mistake. I guess it boils down to self-reflection, as you later say...
Quoting creativesoul
Why is self-reflection good if not in relation to considering behavior towards others? In solitude, it doesn’t matter what fictions we create to console ourselves, and why would we have an inclination to do so if there were no group in which we had an image of ourselves to uphold?
I’m not at all convinced, if that matters. Your fable fails to illustrate this point... and this is not an expression of sour grapes.
Paine makes a distinction between societal ethics (cultural indoctrination) as being a positive sort of cooperation amongst the collective, and government as a counter balance to evil nature of the individual (or in terms of this discussion, as an impediment to the individual who may go on to further develop his moral thought/belief in an adversarial or sociopathic manner).
This is worthy of further consideration.
Paine was an aside... I'm not even sure of his Ethics or if he had any. When I was reading him, it was all about motivation and attitude about the role of government, notably what the conditions were for rejecting the government.
:wink:
Anyway... I need to think a few things through here. Some clarity is needed to ensure we're all on the same page. Given the 'depth' of the argumentative basis(thought/belief), and all of the different jargon popping in and out of existence here... :halo:
A bridge of mutual understanding needs to be maintained. We've a good start, I think.
I want you to follow me here. I'll come back to this later if need be. There's another underlying crucial matter. We need to bring it more into the forefront of our considerations here.
Methodology. It will cover this as well.
There are some historical methods that are useless for taking proper account of that which existed in it's entirety prior to our account.
There are some philosophical methods that arrive at all sorts of gibberish and/or otherwise preposterous conclusions.
Some. Not all.
It does not follow that all uses are useless. Our saying and/or arriving at that doesn't make much sense to begin with. I know you and Janus are playing around with rejecting the law of contradiction, but doing so will inevitably result in equivocation and/or some other kind of incoherence.
Agree?
We talk about smashing things into pieces that are able to be smashed into pieces. Moral things aren't such things. Moral things do indeed consist of other things, of simpler things. All of these elementary constituents/ingredients exist in their entirety prior to becoming part of one of the multitude of different things that we've chosen to call "moral".
All moral things are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Do you follow me? There are no exceptions. Every example confirms.
Quoting praxis
What determines whether or not The Fox and the Grapes has the lesson that it has been said to have since it's very inception? That lesson is called "the moral of the story". It is a moral lesson. It is not about nor does it consider behaviour towards others.
Your agreement isn't necessary here... is it?
It(the story) is existentially dependent upon others for it is language based... That's irrelevant regarding whether or not all moral things consider behaviour towards another. They don't, and the story is itself a piece of evidence that falsifies the criterion.
The depth of consideration and values of those interpreting it.
Quoting creativesoul
Never.
I agree with this. The fable belongs to the community of language users which first conceived it and all those who continue it's use via reporting upon it.
A correct/accurate/trustworthy report will take account of it's original meaning. The meaning is the moral of the story. The moral of that story does not consider behaviour towards others. It is called and has been called "the moral of the story" since it's inception.
I cannot explain this in many more ways...
Are we in agreement yet?
How's my existential quantification coming along?
Just to be clear here...
Do you realize that I'm not offering moral judgment here? Calling it "the moral of the story" does not require my approval/disapproval of the thought, belief, and/or behaviour any more than calling the place I get my gas a "gas station" requires my approval of that namesake. I'm offering an account... an exhaustive description(within the realm of relevancy/germaneness) of what all things called "moral" have in common.
Later we can get into which ones ought be put to use and how/why.
I don’t think this line of thought is important to the project of determining the source of morals. I’ve found it interesting though.
Seems to be of utmost importance to me(by my lights). If we claim that all things moral are about considering behaviour towards others, then we're mistaken if some morals are not about considering behaviour towards others. Considering one's own personal outlook in a situation where there are no others around - such as is the case with the moral of The Fox and the Grapes - is not considering behaviour towards others.
Therefore, the criterion is mistaken. There are actual morals that contradict what the criterion claims that all things moral have in common. The criterion makes a false claim about some morals. It cannot properly account for all morals.
"All morals are about considering behaviour towards others" is false.
Well, we differ here and we agree. I've found this conversation to be quite interesting. It's nice having you around as well. Dissenting opinions are welcome.
Cheers. If I could buy you a drink... we'd all be buzzed!
:wink:
:up:
This is my primary mandate. I think we might accidentally prove something else, than what is meant here.
@praxis We've (me & @creativesoul) have been drinking for a while now. You should have a drink too.
That MF @praxis never addresses me. we probably agree too much.
What the fuck do I know? In my ignorance, it appears to be quite effective.
This is the existential constant. What more qualification is needed?
I'd like to resolve this, but it's fine if you'd like to move on.
I've identified two morals in the fable, which are insufficiencies in self-reflection and a good work ethic. The traditional interpretation is that it's just about a good work ethic, I understand. I believe the lack of self-reflection is the more significant moral, personally.
Regarding the traditional moral, there is nothing wrong with seeking low-lying fruit. In fact, it may be more ethical to stay within your natural niche, rather than working hard to expand it, because you may be disrupting the natural balance. Other species, and perhaps eventually yourself, could pay a price for disrupting the natural order too aggressively.
The implied work ethic that we should work hard to exploit natural resources beyond our natural reach is obviously cultural in origin, and actually rather disturbing. And it's meant to program children!
That the fox considers itself a failure means that it has adopted the work ethic and has failed to live up to it. So, not its own outlook and not failing itself but the expectations of those who imparted the ethic. The failure only matters in relation to others, because as I've previously mentioned, her energy might be better spent moving on and seeking low-lying fruit elsewhere. Her lack of industriousness is of concern to society and not necessarily to herself.
Incidentally, there's a compelling argument that hunter-gatherers had to be forced into agrarian life because it sucked compared to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, at least for many hundreds of years.
We might also consider the meaning of "behavior towards others." Clearly, we can express behavior towards others that are not in the vicinity of ourselves, and our successes and failures effect others. It might be claimed that the fox's failure doesn't effect anyone else, but if that's the case, why does the fox need to contrive the fiction that the grapes are sour? If it's to console himself, why does he need consolation? We don't console ourselves with comforting fictions every time we feel frustration and failure. The fox is attempting to save face, to put it colloquially, and this relates to others. If there are no other actual witnesses it could just be an ego driven habit. If the fox were truly a solitary animal it would have no such habit, or it would eventually fade away if the fox became truly solitary.
The fox's moral code includes a particular work ethic that it betrayed. It doesn't matter if anyone else witnessed it or was directly effected. It's like breaking a promise that you've made to the society that you belong to. If it's a good promise to make then you've let down your community in whatever actual benefit the promise is supposed to encourage. You've also diminished the value of the promise itself by your unfaithfulness. The community bond is weakened.
Good day to you, Sir. :razz:
Good. You agree that there is at least one moral to the story. That's all I'm saying here. That moral, while being existentially dependent upon others as a result of it's existential dependency upon language, is not about considering behaviour towards others. It's just not. I'm not making it up. I'm simply offering an accurate account of it. So...
Not all morals consider behaviour towards others.
I'm not ignoring the explanations and/or entailments that you've just offered. It's just not time for that yet. I hope you'll be around for that too.
After we sort out the origen, we can compare/contrast different moral thought/belief in a comparative value assessment in terms of what's the best way to think, believe, and/or act in some situation or other...
Right now, we are still laying the groundwork.
Not exactly, you’re also saying that it’s not about considering behaviour towards others. You must see that that’s where we disagree, or I don’t follow your meaning.
I imagine it should be simple to explain. You might describe your meaning and perhaps give examples of moral ‘behavior towards others’ and real-life moral behavior not towards others.
You said that there were two. There are two(on your interpretation).
Who and/or what determines the moral of the story?
The community of language users who first imagined the fox in a human situation and recorded the story along with it's moral. The moral is a life lesson. A lesson that is meant to guide one's future behaviour should they find themselves in the fox's situation. The moral is don't be like the fox. Don't adapt an attitude that what is not currently within one's reach is not worth having.
That does not consider behaviour towards others.
So what if instead of a grape the Fox was unsuccessful in seducing a potential mate who rebuffed him?
I’m just trying to understand your distinction between behavior towards others and behavior not towards others, as it relates to morals.
If you don’t want to cooperate that’s fine. It’s entirely your choice.
But I'm neither drawing that distinction nor talking about it. The distinction is between considering behaviour towards another and considering one's own thought, belief, and/or behaviour in a specific context that is not considering behaviour towards another. The latter is what The Fox and the Grapes is about. It's not about the former.
The distinction is being drawn as part of the comparison/contrast between two different criterions for what counts as a moral thing. The first criterion is my own. All moral things are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. The other criterion came from another participant. It claims that all moral things are about considering behaviour towards others.
With all universal criterions, it only take one actual example to the contrary to falsify them. The Fox and the Grapes falsifies the criterion is question. Not all morals are about and/or consider behaviour towards another.
I could not have been more cooperative.
Are you aware that you've been talking in prescriptive terms whereas I'm talking in descriptive.
Two very different methodologies...
Again, I’ve just been trying to figure out your distinction. I’m satisfied now and I agree with you.
I guess that I have a habit of being too loose in my interpretations, or I’m just slow.
I do not think of you in such terms. No worries. Someone needs to take me to task. That's the point of putting it out there.
Do you place much value in the rules of logical entailment?
I think the point you are missing here is that in moral thought we are considering what kind of person we want to be, and that makes no sense in the absence of the other. The ethical question as to how to best live is a different matter. It might concern only oneself, but the idea of being a particular kind of person can only derive from interaction with others, and is introjected such that it will still imply the other, even in their physical absence.
Hey Sam! I'm good. How are you?
I'm not missing that at all. I've even argued for the existential dependency that all morals have upon an other.
Rather, I'm arguing about the content of what counts as moral thought - in kind. Moral thought does not have to be about, and/or in the context of considering behaviour towards another. Some is. Not all.
I'm actually beginning to wonder why that seems to be something so troublesome to agree on for some here.
Do you agree with that?
I think that I may have figured it out, and in the process identified a basic flaw in the project of attempting to develop a universal criterion for what counts as a moral thing, which is essentially that we may be blind to morals frameworks (and their particular sets of values) that differ from our own.
The value of morals, I believe, is in their capacity to promote and regulate cooperation in large groups. Large groups of people cooperating as a unit appears to be a highly successful adaptive survival strategy, to put it in evolutionary terms. With this in mind, I'll reconsider the claim that 'all moral things are about considering behavior towards others', starting with the premises that:
As I've tried to previously show, the fox in the Fox and the Grapes fable considers itself a failure for giving up and not working hard to go beyond its natural reach and tries to console itself for being a failure. It tries to save face. This indicates that it has adopted or has been inculcated by a culture with a particular moral framework that values industriousness. By not living up to the expectations or ethics of its culture it has failed its culture. It has failed others. When considering giving up on the grapes (considering behavior), the fox was considering being faithful or unfaithful to (towards) its culture (others).
If I consider being unfaithful to my wife, I'm considering being unfaithful to another person. If I were unfaithful, my wife, or anyone else, may never be aware of it.
Loyalty/betrayal may be a moral intuition that you are not considering, creativesoul, possibly because, as you've mentioned in another topic, you're "pretty damn liberal," and liberalism tends to devalue the moral intuition of loyalty/betrayal.
I would say most is concerned with considering behavior towards others, and even if it is not a consideration of behavior specifically directed towards another, it will always be a consideration of the implications for others of whatever behavior is in question and/ or of how others would see me if they knew that I had behaved that way and so on.
That is true for socially motivated people. But what about the person whose moral thought/belief is motivated by principle?
Even in the case of, for example, a moral proscription against masturbation; it is generally considered wrong because, or insofar as, it is thought to make you unfit for sexual relationship with another. If it were condemned because it was thought to cause blindness, then it would be considered to be morally wrong because you would become a burden on your friends and family and society in general (you might then be on welfare for example).
What about Socrates? He drank the hemlock motivated by personal obligation to moral principle. The sentiment of the entire city was forgiving of Socrates despite the judgement they had passed upon him, they even gave him a free pass, which he refused out of moral duty. I don't see how choosing to death was ethically pertinent to the rest of Athens, but I certainly see how it was to Socrates.
"Self improvement is masturbation." ~Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Leave masturbation out of it, what did it ever do to you? It made me blind. :cool: :joke:
Ethics: how should I live?
Morality: how should I be in relation to others (most specifically people)?
So, you have for example Bioethics, but the idea of Biomorality seems somehow wrong to me.
So, I see ethics as inclusive of, but not restricted to, moral thought. But they're just my definitions, and I hold to them because they seem most consistent with general usage. My mind can always be changed by good counterexamples, though.
A good friend of mine who is self-admittedly addicted to masturbation, says that it is training for being able to delay ejaculation when involved in a "real" sexual encounter.
I had another friend who used to say "Women are alright, but you can't beat the real thing!" I never found out what the real thing is; perhaps I was lucky!
Now that is funny! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
I think if we could reconcile our terms here, you would be more agreeable to my meaning.
Earlier, while conversing with @creativesoul, I loosely defined the terms we were discussing.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
So in regard to the example of Socrates, you can better understand my position.
You then say that we can make a distinction (presumably about moral thinking which is specifically about others and moral thinking which is not?) because we have "existentialized" the "variables". So, I am not clear what you mean by this, but that may be because this has been lifted out of the context of the whole conversation.
Next, I don't know what it means that moral thought "pertains to the stages of pre-linguistic thought/ belief", because, firstly I don't accept that there are any clearly formed pre-linguistic thoughts or beliefs, and secondly because, even if there were, they would not be linguistically formed thoughts and beliefs and I can't see how something.like linguistically formed moral thought could pertain to anything pre-linguistic. I can see how linguistically formed thought could evolve out of pre-linguistic mental processes, but how it could ever pertain to them if "pertain" is meant to signify anything like 'justify' or 'be justified by' I am unable to say.
So, perhaps we would be best to clear up these issues first before going on to the rest.
That's always best.
Quoting Janus
@creativesoul and I have been proceeding methodologically, not so much to determine some absolute truth about the source of morals, but to ensure we are conforming to the same criterion in our discourse. Even if we've gotten nowhere, we are, at least, not bogged down by the semantics of divergent concepts.
So far, we have qualified an existential constant as 'thought/belief', and agreed upon one variable: that a certain mode of thought/belief is "moral in kind" . The methodological schematic begins by tracing thought/belief through its various stages up to the point that it becomes "moral in kind". We have proceeded through a consideration of ethics as it pertains to prelinguistic thought/belief, up through the cultural inculcation/indoctrination of societal ethics, and then as it appears to circle back upon the individual where he internalizes a moral code. Up to this point, we have agreed on this methodological survey of the source of morals, more or less.
Quoting Janus
I agree with you here. I don't hold prelinguistic thought/belief to be ethically charged. It is has no capacity beyond aesthetic assessment, that is, it lacks the faculty requirements of ethical judgment (viz. ethical thought/belief). I don't even think it can be called quasi-ethical, because I don't think the ethical consciousness is awakened prior to language acquisition and cultural inculcation/indoctrination. Moreover, I hold the stage of cultural inculcation/indoctrination to be the most superficial level of ethical existence, and, as such it remains rather insignificant for the individual.
It might be helpful, to me at least, to distinguish between prelinguistic (instinct) and, I’ll call it non-linguistic (subconscious), thought/belief or intuition.
‘Moral dumbfounding’ may strongly indicate the existence of either or both, and attest to it charge.
I'm arguing that moral dumbfounding occurs at an advanced stage of morality, well beyond the primitive stage of prelinguistic thought/belief. I think the example of Socrates and the hemlock is precisely this case. My point is: the deeper the ethical existence, the more irrational it appears.
Indeed. It does not follow that their morals are different in kind. They are still morals. They are different in terms of approval/disapproval. They are different in all sorts of ways. However, they are all about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Indeed. Cognitive dissonance requires a pre-existing worldview. Moral dumbfounding is a kind of cognitive dissonance.
Nice point. The cognitive dissonance of moral dumbfounding is not capricious, like prelinguistic thought/belief. It is embedded in a complex infrastructure of inculcated thought/belief compounded by post-linguististc thought/belief (viz. reflection and deliberation) . . . Moral dumbfounding can perfectly explain why Socrates drinks the hemlock.
Can it?
I was under the impression that one was morally dumbfounded when and if they could not answer certain questions regarding why they believe something or other(strongly), and/or how they've come to such hold such conviction in moral belief.
Was that the case with Plato's own personal superhero?
Projection?
:yum:
I think so. But I probably have looser standards here.
Quoting creativesoul
I'm under the impression that "one was morally dumbfounded when and if they could not answer certain questions regarding why they believe something or other(strongly), and/or how they've come to such hold such conviction in moral belief", I would have to add: only when the question posed is done so rationally (by a relatively normal person), and is meant to elicit a rational answer. For the one who is morally dumbfounded, his reasons are perfectly rational and completely justify his position.
So intuitive, non-linguistic, subconscious, whichever you want to call it then?
I would go so far as to call it a second nature. Correct me if I'm wrong.
He's mine too. But I'm more aligned with Antisthenes account (via Diogenes), than Plato's.
I agree with Nietzsche, Plato fucked everything up - that pussylicking pedophile.
Rational?
How about true?
Plato has his own notion of the unknown. Unfortunately he claimed to know too much about it.
:halo:
Those are not different names for the same referent on my view. Unnecessarily multiplying entities is against my religion.
:wink:
Of what use are those notions in this context?
That's why you are so valuable to this discussion. When we all push ahead, you keep your hands on the reins.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, me wants to know too.
I think it would be wise, in the context of this discussion, to honor the great guillotine of Mister Hume, and leave out the notion of "true" thought/belief. Otherwise, we are going to end up in a different universe, a new thread. I think rational thought/belief is fair enough here.
I don't think he read much Kierkegaard.
Maybe not. Probably not. Fear and Loathing?
You had to bring it up. A book that constantly reminds us of the highest ethical idea - qua. the tragic hero.
Not sure how Hume's guillotine is applicable. When talking about moral dumbfounding, we're talking about what we've named some particular state of mind. When we're offering answers to what grounds our moral convictions those answers can most certainly be true, and must be if one is not morally dumbfounded. Seems that Hume's guillotine is irrelevant at this time.
I cannot remember. I do remember some very odd language use.
I love philosophers who are courageous enough to speak oddly on occasion.
Quoting creativesoul
In this scenario, this particular state of mind (the morally dumbfouned) is in relation to the particular state of mind of the other(s). We cannot call the true, what is, without tossing this discussion out with the bathwater, and beginning again from the beginning with epistemology.
Ethical conversation is always prescriptive, the ought. "True" doesn't matter, only reason.
Consider that the other tells you murder is wrong, but condones just war, and everybody else is same. Suppose you believe that murder is not immoral, but sometimes necessary. Where is the truth here? Who is morally dumbfounded?
On my view we cannot draw an equivalence between what's true and what is without equating truth with what's happened. Doing so renders us incapable of accounting for what sorts of things are true and what makes them so.
I agree though. Perhaps it's best to not invoke any specific notion of "truth" as of yet. We're using one already, but it is not the one that draws an equivalence between truth and reality(or what's happened - on my view).
That said, I thought we had already effectively situated the presupposition of correspondence to what's happened and the attribution of meaning within thought/belief formation itself.
All thought/belief presupposes it's own truth somewhere along the line. All thought/belief is meaningful to the thinking/believing creature.
That is the rough general - very common sense - criterion and/or outline for what pre-linguistic and/or non-linguistic thought/belief must be able to satisfy. We arrive at that criterion(although this arrival has not yet been argued for) by virtue of looking towards statements of thought/belief as a means for assessing the common denominators of them all, regardless of the particulars.
There's a bridge that still needs building it seems?
Oh, but it's not just an assumption. It is a premiss that I've argued for may times over in past. Common sense actually. We can stay on course. Call it an assumption here, but just realize that it is well grounded by the same method used for arriving at a universal criterion for what all things called "moral" have in common.
That would make a great thread. But you said it "All thought/belief presupposes it's own truth somewhere along the line. All thought/belief is meaningful to the thinking/believing creature." This is a fundamental assumption for what we are discussing here. And it has allowed us to discuss it quite efficiently in comparison to what was happening the first 15 pages. As far as the truth of meaning is concerned, that is beyond the scope of the present conversation, no?
Then may I invoke the gravely overlooked guillotine of Nietzsche, that the only correspondence between what happened and what it means, is accidental or conditioned.
There is no necessary causal or logical relation between what we experience, and what we think of that experience.
We went over this before, if I could get away with prefixing every word with " the ", I would.
Unsure how this applies to a framework that says nothing of the sort. Looks like a conflation between truth and meaning. I've not talked in terms of truth as "a relation between experience and what that experience means"... nor would I
I didn't understand then, and I still do not understand such thinking...
:smile:
Its a satire on the the assumption that what we say has actual existential meaning. :grin:
Is that different than having meaning and/or being meaningful?
Ok good. I see how you mean to use true. :up:
I believe Socrates was morally dumbfounded in his moral conviction to eat the hemlock, and he gave plenty of sincere reason - "true statements about the source of [his] own moral convictions". But they were quite inconsistent in regard to what we know scientifically about death and social justice, as well as in regard to the general sentiment of common folk.
Well, just ask an athiest if God has meaning, then ask if God exists.
I'm trying to reconcile this point. My concern is, what is the criterion for morality, who is making the moral judgment? If it is a true statement about the source of one's own moral convictions, then you are right, but if it is, say, culture, then it is entirely possible for Socrates to give a coherent but deluded reason for why he is ethically obligated to drink the hemlock.
All experience is existentially dependent upon a thinking/believing creature.
Surely that's a bit more compelling on a common sense basis/criterion for what is to be counted as and/or called "experience". If existential dependency doesn't count as being necessary, then nothing will.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I would answer yes to both. The explication would satisfy both questions. There is no difference between belief in and/or about God and God.
Now you're just getting deep. :flower:
And is thought/belief existentially dependent upon experience? Chicken-Egg :snicker:
Evolutionarily... I would think that amoebas are incapable of either.
Hume skirted around an important aspect of thought/belief. Expectation. Seems to be adequate for concluding belief and drawing some line between stimulus/response and behaviour 'driven' by thought/belief.
That's not true. We've been involved in descriptive ethical/moral conversation throughout. I think that that may be where some of the issues are arising from. I'm talking about moral things as a kind, and others are talking about moral things as a manner of expressing their approval/agreement as compared/contrasted to immoral.
Quoting creativesoul
You are misconstruing what I said. I was referring to the scenario (regarding moral dumbfounding) in which two or more moral agents are discussing the rational justification for their respective moral positions.
We, however, are in agreement. The descriptive conversion in which we are presently engaged is meta-ethical - it stands detached from prescriptive ethical considerations.
They certainly lack a neocortex.
Quoting creativesoul
I can agree with that at the level of immediacy and prelinguistic thought/belief. But, other than the guillotine, I completely reject Hume's ethics (and all derivations therefrom). So, as far as 'expectation' is concerned, I cannot associate it with anything ethical.
In the context of moral dumbfounding? Plenty, in my opinion.
Dumbfounding is indicative of an implicit evaluation or conditioned response that is beneath conscious awareness.
The term 'prelinguistic' has been used a lot in the topic and I thought it might be helpful to clarify what is being meant in its usage. It can mean developments prior to language acquisition for our species or for children. The former might be considered instinctive or innate, but not the latter.
Regarding the source of morals, a distinction might be made between our innate condition, early pre-linguistic childhood conditioning, cultural conditioning (part of childhood conditioning), and whatever conditioning we might intentionally impose on ourselves.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
You are a brave soul, Merk.
:grin:
Quoting praxis
I agree. I associate moral dumbfounding with irrational moral feeling/intuition which is grounded implicitly in moral though/belief. I feel that the former is analogous to the ethically charged subconscious, as the latter is to conditioned ethical consciousness.
Quoting praxis
There is much grey area between these categorical stages. And, although specific details of our individual interpretations (of each stage) may vary a bit, I see a general agreement over the basic framework we have established here. We have succeeded, at least, in establishing a reasonably sensible working theory on the source of morals. There is definitely more to figure out, but this is not a bad achievement here on TPF, despite whether we've actually achieved anything of significance. If nothing else, we will be better prepared when we enter into any philosophical discussion on ethics.
Good. We are involved in ethical conversation and it is not prescriptive... yet! Groundwork is crucial. We are getting there.
We have gotten this far, I am optimistic that we can take it a bit farther.
Where is the groundwork most required at this point?
Well put!
I hope you stick around. I've been restraining from addressing some of the considerations you've put forth, particularly those involving the possible logical consequences of the Fox. That is a conversation that needs to happen, just not yet.
I've some senior graduation ceremonies to attend in real life this weekend. Great 'kid'. Loved to help him make better sense of Stove's worst argument. His professor used it to start his intro class. All we have are our perceptions and conceptions. Therefore all we can know about is our perceptions/conceptions...
Fun and easy to talk about trees as a means to differentiate between "trees" and trees.
I'll return later. Just a heads up to explain my future absence for a few days.
Thanks/kudos to all who've participated here.
What I'm doing is attempting to establish an adequate basis of true statements about morals, including their origen as a means to provide the best universal basis from which to establish a moral code. Amongst other things...
We still need to discuss power over people and further parse out the necessity of our being interdependent social creatures. Those who write the rules have tremendous power. Legitimized moral belief.
What do you find that still needs parsed prior to comparing/contrasting which rules ought be maintained and/or implemented and which ought not?
Thanks. Hopefully praxis and I don't fuck everything up in your absence. :wink:
(Stand by...addressing your last post.)
No worries. You two are fine. For all I know, you've already been through all this unbeknownst to me, but the novelty of my framework(odd way of talking) is holding your attention just to see if it gleans anything new and trustworthy/dependable/convincing.
:wink:
I like it. I will focus on this as the common goal (in addition to my own, personal, sadomasochist, selfish reasons :joke: ).
Quoting creativesoul
This point has been on the tip of my tongue for a while. Just haven't had the virtuosity to spit it out. This concern is my new priority here.
Quoting creativesoul
This is of secondary importance to the above concern, but I think it is important to examine the internalization of ethics. How is it internalized by the individual, and to what extent? What is the necessary relation of individually held morality to societal ethics? How do we clear up the confused dynamic of societal conditioning and internalization as it pertains to the moral authority (the rule writer) versus free ethical agency? How can we establish an adequate basis for true answers to these questions, and which questions require reformulation?
Indeed!
So first question: what is the predominant moral authority? And, what is the primary source of that moral authority?
My instinct tells me: 1)consensus, 2)history.
First, consensus with parent, whose morality was developed over a period of history, which, in turn, began through consensus with parent...ad infinitum.
But, I could be wrong.
Funny you say that. There are other benefits of establishing a universal criterion. It comes in quite handy when we talk about how to compare/contrast competing conceptions.
:wink:
It's also quite useful to tame down rhetorical drivel regarding claims and/or implications/entailment that any and/or all 'definitions' and/or conceptions are on equal footing. The groundwork has already been put down to conclude that we can get some definitions wrong in a vey specific sense of being "wrong".
It's begun being laid to establish common sense conclusions about existential dependency and timeframes.
It's as though we have to enter the same stadium if we are going to compete in a contest of bocce ball.
The analogy doesn't quite take out endeavor into proper account. I like watching people play games even sometimes when I do not want to play.
But even then, the best way to watch is by entering the stadium. Watching a summarization on TV never matches being there, live at the bocce ball match.
The stadium is the universal criterion in my analogy, to be clear.
Can you present an example where this has occurred in our discourse? Not disagreeing, only looking for a live example of such error so it can be properly understood.
Let me just re-emphasize. :ok:
Happy travels and congrats to the kid. :party:
Ethical authority arrives at some point in societal conditioning. The primary influence of ethical authority is awakening the individual to the dichotomy of right and wrong.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Perhaps we should approximate where the notion of authority first arrises.
Authority becomes an established variable in prelinguistic thought/belief. It is in the primal emotional response to one's subjugation under a dominant figure that develops the thought/belief in authority as something real.
From here, we can transition with confidence into the introduction of linguistic thought/belief by authority . . . With linguistic thought/belief comes conceptual abstraction, and it would seem at this point, all necessary conditions are met for the inculcation of thought/belief that is moral in kind.
Highly relevant in regards to considering the source of morals. IMO.
Understood.
That has not taken place here. Earlier you - quite astutely - put such potential things to rest in another way, with other words.
I've seen it happen too many times to count here on this forum and others as well.
I'd like to address this ellipsis.
The question is, what is the difference between linguistic thought/belief that is non-moral in kind, and linguistic thought/belief that is moral in kind? I would say that the former makes ethically neutral assessments of the world (analytical and speculative), while the latter makes ethically charged judgements (normative and prescriptive), that are likely to be someway associated with one assessment or another.
I know exactly what you are referring to. :cheer:
Not much activity during your absence. Just my blabbing. You should be able to catch up quickly.
This is the category of thought our criterion is restricted to. All talk of the "ought" is neither here nor there, but only an assessment. (This point is for others, not @creativesoul).
I reject Hume's framework for a couple of different reasons, including the guillotine. Hume's entire edifice is based upon an arbitrarily drawn distinction between emotion and reason that is itself based upon an ill-conceived notion of thought/belief. Hume wants to characterize reason as though it does not contain/include emotion. That could only be the case if reason was not existentially dependent upon emotion. Reason(Hume's conception) is a metacognitive endeavor. It consists entirely of thinking about pre-existing thought/belief. Disinterest is not completely devoid of all emotional content. It is itself an emotional attitude of sorts, one of 'self-control'. This could be further explicated, but I think we all agree on that much.
Thought/belief begins simply and grows in it's complexity according to the content of the correlations themselves. At conception there is no thought/belief. All thought/belief consist entirely of correlations between different things. Prior to language, correlations are drawn between the creature's own autonomous mental ongoings such as hunger, fear, and/or the lack thereof. Those are what's necessary for meeting the two basic needs for survival, gathering resources and avoiding danger. This sometimes results in contentment/discontentment amongst other things. Fear and hunger are at the foundation of all subsequent emotion and thought/belief.
Regarding expectation...
Expectation is a hallmark - the most reliable one - from which we can confidently say that the candidate under our observation/consideration has formed thought/belief, and/or is a thinking/believing creature. Humeans may wish to invoke the problem of induction, but it's moot here. A creature is more than capable of holding expectations without having the capability to presuppose a consistent world. Hume's inability to arrive at this is a result of not ever having drawn and maintained the actual distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief.
Rather, successful prediction/expectation is itself existentially dependent upon a consistent world. It does not follow from the fact that unexpected/unforeseen events can take place due to previously unknown causes, that we are unjustified/unwarranted regarding all expectation/prediction based upon consistent past events and/or their recollection. To quite the contrary, one who refrains from holding any expectation intentionally, would be arguing along the lines of refusing to believe that anything will happen because we've been wrong about what would happen before. We need not be omniscient in order to form, have, and/or hold well-grounded inferences/expectations/predictions.
The point of all of this is simply to situate expectation where it belongs...
Our notion of thought/belief must also include some physiological aspects, or at least be falsifiable/verifiable. It seems that the complexity of thought/belief is proportional to the physiological/biological complexity of our candidate.
A venus flytrap, for example, can detect stimulus. It would be a stretch to say that it is capable of having/holding expectation about what's to come, and/or what's about to happen/take place...
So, that's another aspect that will definitely need to be addressed.
What it could mean for us to say that something/anything can even be 'beneath conscious awareness'. What would be above it? A spatial relationship between two things requires that both have a spatiotemporal location.
I also have a hard time making sense of this notion of 'implicit evaluation'...
Evaluations are deliberative measures with clearly established criteria. Evaluations are not the sort of things that exist implicitly within all moral thought/belief. Nor are they of much use here. Ignorance of one's own worldview predates evaluations thereof. Moral dumbfounding always results from the former but not always the latter.
Furthermore, implication is existentially dependent upon language use. It belongs in the domain of discourse about a single language expression having more than one accepted use(shared meaning).
So - knowing all of that - the only sense I can make of an "implicit evaluation" is when we're talking about a deliberate evaluation that has been previously made but has been long since forgotten, but the results left an impression of sorts that is still identifiable by virtue of it's ongoing affects/effects. In that sense, an implicit moral evaluation would be better understood as one element, one piece, one part, one ingredient... of a case of moral dumbfounding.
Not all cases of dumbfounding include much deliberate evaluation to begin with. Seems to me that correcting the dissonance is itself existentially dependent upon such an evaluation.
One who has a good grasp upon his/her own worldview also has implicit evaluations, so the notion of moral dumbfounding is not helpful here as far as I can tell...
Am I missing something?
The above - by my lights - looks like the result of a prior misunderstanding. However, I do not think further hyper focus will sort it out. Sorting is sometimes better done indirectly.
Are you suggesting that you don’t believe in moral intuition?
Not at all. I'm suggesting that moral dumbfounding has been rendered useless here.
I'd be happy to intentionally analyze moral intuition. What is it?
Does my earlier assessment lack explanatory power regarding intuition of any sort?
That is the extent of my agreement with Jung however.
Moral dumbfounding is believed by some to be evidence for moral intuition.
Quoting creativesoul
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_intuitionism
They are a kind of thought/belief. The kind is determined by their content. Unconscious operative thought/belief. Those about acceptable/unacceptable thought/belief and/or behaviour are moral in kind.
That is the basis that exhausts all notions of moral intuition.
I would agree to the following(which seems amenable to some of the positions mentioned in the wiki article or it's link).
Not all well-grounded true belief is existentially dependent upon language acquisition and/or use.
Yeah, perhaps setting out and/or enumerating our agreements is a good thing to do...
I'd have to see that argument. :wink:
It’s not clear to me how you distinguish between moral judgments that, on examination, ‘thought/belief’ can be clearly articulated and judgments where they cannot (as when dumbfounded).
Can you re-phrase this?
Never mind.
I want to find a way to help us all better understand thought/belief and it's different complexity levels.
I've seen several different notions of 'moral judgment'. On my view, all moral judgments are about what's counts as either acceptable or unacceptable behaviour. It is to think, believe, and/or say that some specific thought, belief, and/or behaviour is one or the other(acceptable/unacceptable).
This begins prior to language(as heretofore argued without subsequent refutation/objection), and first manifests in language via mimicry and/or in situations where one witnessed the terms in question being used by others.
Does that help?
All else being equal...
Cases of moral judgment by a language user who is capable of clearly explicating their own moral thought/belief are cases of one who is not ignorant of their worldview. Such capability does not require careful scrutiny at the level of origens. I mean only to say that not all explanations are on equal footing.
Cases of moral judgment by a language user who is not capable of clearly explicating their own thought/belief are cases of one who is ignorant of the origins/sources of her/his/their own worldview. Such incapability does not equate to having/holding ungrounded thought/belief.
Just because one may not be aware of the ground, does not mean that there is none. Just because one may not be capable of arguing for their belief, it does not follow that it is not well-grounded. Just because one may be able to argue for their own belief, it does not follow that it is well-grounded. Coherency alone is insufficient for both, solid ground upon which to base subsequent inference and truth.
Does that address your concerns?
It means - quite simply - thought/belief that is formed and/or held prior to language acquisition, and/or by a language-less creature.
Quoting praxis
Our children are individuals of our species. Thus, I do not understand how something could be called "instinctive" or "innate" for a species but not for an individual thereof.
Quoting praxis
Oh, indeed! There are all sorts of distinctions that have yet to have been drawn and maintained between different complexity levels of linguistically informed thought/belief.
Merk and I were amidst drawing a distinction between moral and ethical along those lines(lines of complexity and/or existential dependency). Much was left unpacked. The aim was what ethical agency was existentially dependent upon; the preconditions necessary for ethical agency to arise/emerge as compared/contrasted to simple moral thought/belief(I presume).
The question needs attention, my friend.
:wink:
That was a typo, thanks for helping me. :scream: Now it's fixed. Just seeing if you were paying attention.. :grin:
This might be the central question. I think I gave very unresolved answers, I will be sure to elaborate...
Have you ever read Hume? Or any secondary literature about his philosophy?
Yes. Our philosophies are actually quite similar in several aspects. He did not get thought/belief right. Humean causation attests to that as well as his notion of belief.
Right. The point is that individuals may have roughly the same intuitions but they can be developed differently depending on cultural influences. If true, that’s relevant to the project of investigating the source of morals.
Ok. So, it seems that you're willing to accept the explanation in the terms I've put to use. My hesitance to invoke "intuition" is based upon it's lack of thorough definition/delineation. As mentioned earlier, and now that I have our agreement, I do not see how multiplying entities/conceptions is helpful here, especially if the framework being employed take take adequate account of all things called "intuition". Unless I'm missing something important in the explanation you've assented to, I think we can say that we agree, and that there is no need to invoke "moral intuition".
I would readily agree that there are simple moral thought/belief common to all humans who eventually learn language.
I would not agree that one can acquire knowledge of morals without evidence.
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
That was an element/tenet of certain 'isms' in a link within the wiki page you linked us to.
I'm listening.
Wouldn't be much of an experience to be a single celled organism...
My issue also lies with evidence. All evidence exists in it's entirety prior to being used as evidence. There is no knowledge that is moral in kind(called "moral knowledge") that is completely devoid of pre-existing thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Such thought/belief begins long prior to our ability to use instances thereof as evidence. Our evidence is behaviour including but not limited to language use. Language allows us to acquire knowledge of that which existed in it's entirety prior to our naming it. Some of those things are themselves existentially dependent upon language use. Some are not.
Moral knowledge without evidence - by my lights - would be existentially dependent upon a creature that acquires knowledge of unacceptable/acceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour and does so - somehow - without ever having any experience. It doesn't make much sense to me, and my foundation could not be any stronger as far as I know.
That's the short of it!
:cool:
Ignorance of conditions (instinct) or conditioning (early development), I would guess.
Both, if it makes sense at all. I'm not sold on it.
What's the criterion for sufficiency/adequacy? I mean how much ignorance does it take to be called "morally dumbfounded"?
We certainly do not demand omniscience as the only possibility for avoiding being dumfounded, do we?
I suggest you try some of the harvard.edu implicit association tests to maybe get a feel for your own ignorance:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
I suggest that we keep the discussion about the content and not the authors. That's never a good sign. Disappointing.
Couldn't say it better.
Quoting creativesoul
It is important to address how moral judgement can, in some cases, become a result of irrational intuition/feeling. It is here that we find the possibility of moral dumbfounding, in that the operation of irrational feeling/intuition cannot be adequately rationalized in terms of thought/belief. I use the example of Socrates to show that despite all the reasons he provides to justify his moral obligation to drink the hemlock, in the eyes of Athens (qua. the entity that ethically opposes Socrates), his rationale is rather unintelligible and quite insane.
Seems like all they really do is masturbate. :lol:
Imo. . .moral dumbfounding is determined by an independent agent from the one that is morally dumbfounded. The morally dumbfound is so hopelessly inured in his moral conviction that there is nothing in existence that can tell against it. From the outside, we can say he is ridiculous, but to him, every ridiculous thing he says makes sense to him.
Moral feeling/intuition comes after thought/belief that is moral in kind. This is a part of the process of the internalization of ethical conditioning. At a certain level of exposure to particular ethical thought/belief, it becomes ingrained and unconscious to a degree - habitual.
We have already reconciled this issue over the first twenty pages of excrutiating debate. Simply follow the comments of praxis, creativesoul, and Merkwurdichliebe, and you can see how your claim fits in.
Quoting Couchyam
Join the discussion.
So far we have discovered many necessary but insufficient sources of morals. It cannot be pinned down to one thing . . . We have entered into deeper examinations of societal conditioning as ethical authority, as well as the internalization of that ethical conditioning in both thought/belief and feeling/intuition that is moral in kind. I would categorize compassion under moral feeling/intuition.
(Add. And although one can behave compassionately at the primitive level of prelinguistic thought/belief, it does not become moral in kind until it is mediated by thought/belief that is moral in kind...here in the present conversation, it would be highly relevant to discuss compassion-as-feeling/intuition in the terms of moral thought/belief.)
The notion that morals are a matter of: "giving advice out of concern", implies an ethical authority, and can be explained as a part of the dynamic of societal conditioning. It can be further examined in the light of the authority, in this case, the one that assumes the role of the ethical superior, whose advice is only incidental. But, what is important here, is that which makes him authority - that he imposes "compassion" on the inferior as the ethical right, an assumption that compassion is good to give, to accept, and to be.
@creativesoul
I can't wait to compile the relevant posts of this discussion. We have made it to 30 pages in less than a month, and for the most, we've not been bogged down in rhetorical bullshit (thanks to the methodology of creative soul).
Quoting creativesoul
A central point.
My hypothesis: particular moral intuitions/feelings can be considered morally dumbfounded in certain relations between independent ethical agents.
I haven't read most of what creativesoul wrote. What would you succinctly say that he gives as the source of morals?
:cool:
...and maybe some deities care about all life. Maybe their purpose is to nurture life, not to nurture humans at the expense of all other life? Wouldn't that make more sense? :chin:
That's just speculation.
He could explain himself better. But, he might agree with something like: the source of morals is multifaceted. We have been proceeding methodologically to parse out "common sense conclusions about existential dependency and timeframes".
Where have they been the last dozen pages?
Downhill for S, is uphill for everyone else. And, speaking of going downhill, you never addressed the issue with Hume.
We have agreed upon a qualifier, an existential constant by which we can conduct a thought experiment. Where is your qualification? where is your thought? where is your experiment?
True
I'm just saying that we need to realize that there are several religion's and it hard to prove them wrong or right.
"Succinct" isn't in his tool kit for one.
Re "multifaceted" what would the facets succinctly be?
A few variables we've examined are: prelinguistic thought/belief, societal conditioning, ethical authority, and internalization of morality.
What would that one be? How could you internalize morality (where presumably it wasn't something internal prior)?
That is why we are examining it. At this stage we pressuppose everything involved in prelinguistic thought/belief. The concept of "internalization" is admittedly an attempt at psychological speculation. We have made the least progress with this category.
Practice. Or perhaps a whip?
How do you internalize language?
Thought
The problem is that morality never occurs as anything other than something internal.
Thought/belief are already internal.
At any rate, so the rest is like saying that "AC/DC is a source of the Cult"?
Perhaps. And we are looking for the source of morals. We've already established that evaluations of prelinguistic assessments are primarily acquired from an external source.
This does not mean thought/belief cannot be affected by something external.
That makes no sense to me. How would you acquire an evaluation from an external source?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Of course. But the wording you used was "internalize morality," as if morality could be something external that we'd then need to internalize.
We've established an understanding of this through the last 12 pages of rigorous debate, it has been existentially quantified.
So my morality is internal to you?
:lol:
I can't literally observe your morality. I can only observe utterances a la sounds/marks etc. that you make, correlated to your morality.
It's like asking if your daydreams are internal to me, as if I could literally observe your daydreams.
So then only you have morality, I suppose. How would you possibly prove that another has morality by referring to "utterances a la sounds/marks etc."
Seems you've sufficiently answered the question for yourself...
TS is the source of morals.
Do only I have daydreams?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
How are we attempting to have discussions of the caliber that we're attempting to have in threads like this when we haven't even learned that empirical claims aren't provable, period? Shouldn't we take 101-level courses and master that material before we try attending graduate seminars?
We are not making empirical claims here, we are conducting a thought experiment in existential quantification.
"X has/doesn't have morality" is an empirical claim.
Maybe we should start with a lot more basic/simple material first.
Neither @praxis, @creativesoul, nor I have made such statements in our particular discourse.
You asked, "How would you possibly prove that another has morality . . . "
So now, not only do we not know that empirical claims are provable, not only do we not know what an empirical claim is, but we can't even recall what we just wrote 5 minutes ago, or we don't really understand what we wrote, or . . .
Yes I did.
Right. Anyway, I'm sure you have some sense of what internalize means, right? Do we really need to go over that?
Hence the question.
It doesn't make sense to talk about internalizing something that's never external in the first place.
Internalize:
Internalize has a connotation that something was external.
Aren't you a native English language speaker?
You're a Solipsist?
No. How would you arrive at that conclusion based on what you're quoting?
TS is stuck in infinite reflection - a perpetual loop of direct relation. He is unable to make the dialectical transition out of immediacy, where a new relation can be synthesized.
Well that was a bunch of gobbledygook. I appreciate that it was only two lines of it though. (Seriously.)
But you know it's true. :wink:
I'm just trying to figure out why you're having trouble with the meaning of 'internalize'.
Maybe try to think of it as forming a habit. You can have the idea and desire to develop a particular habit but until it is actually a habit it is not internalized. Make sense? or is that too pedestrian of an explanation?
He understands. He's just fucking with you because he has nothing relevant to add.
That's why I said:
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Yes. All his discussions take the same pattern, with everyone. He starts out like he is seriously interested in philosophical discourse. But, as soon as you get started, he begins to spew his confused rhetorical garbage about how nothing makes sense to him. I think he just wants companionship with somebody as confused as he is.
Perhaps it could be named "The Solipsists Club", but the very notion of a club for solipsists seems absurd. We could reverse Groucho's remark and say, "I would never belong to a club that would have anybody else as a member".
I could guess. We should officially designate them as: "The Interlopers".
Don't know. Don't care. Hope they return to wherever they cam from... and soon.
Notice the dichotomies at work in their 'offerings'... Flies in bottles.
You can see the disruptive effect of some of these Interlopers on the past page and a half. They showed up after 12 pages of silence and did nothing but attempt to disrupt a conversation that has repeatedly established the validity of its methodology. Lucky for us, I always carry my handy fly swatter. . . to shooo them off.
Yes. You'll have that.
To be fair...
The discourse here is unconventional in some remarkable ways. Such was the starting point:To take note of an underlying issue with convention itself. The position I'm arguing for/from is still yet conventional enough to pass the muster, I think. It is nonetheless a foreign methodological approach to many.
To be consistent in my own 'personal' morals...
There are better ways to address the situation aside from resorting to personal attacks/remarks.
What would suffice even in drawing of time the source of all morals from past, present and future ?
Does every question that is asked have a possible or easily answer ?
If so how does one imagine a square circle ?
At worst morality in the purer form of reason might be conceived as Hobbes did to arrest ourselves from our animal nature. But this obfuscates our capacity to act in accordance to our better natures of our own accord. We might also appeal to consequentialism to give us a bottom line and schema that is in order to categorize stealing as wrong one first needs property law. We can supply more humane and developed principles perhaps by some version of Kant's categorical imperative a sense of humanitarian duty. Alternatively you could be entirely suspicious of it and view morality as some kind of sickening fancy, conflated norms where institutions are mistaken for principles. Such skepticism is fine but then with the separation one must account for the principle or excuse oneself from the discussion. We can then make distinctions based on culture or even between say groups and individuals, balancing norms to individual moral virtue.
I think what I said above is a fairly good condense version of getting somewhere in a discussion of morality but there is nothing in it that I would call a source.... a proverbial genesis or rivers mouth, a foundation or bedrock... It is not my wish to be facetious but what would constitute a satisfactory answer to a source of morals? If we could even discuss what it is we want in the answer before answering it perhaps we can further some kind of discussion of the matter.
For in doing so we at least admit our biased, forfeit to some degree the possibility of the question being answered and have to justify our own rational basis. I have a rather pessimistic view on the subject but not in the tragic sense.... more in the sense of the struggle to be good and the good life.
But given the general and idealistic pursuit of the question (not calling question shit) we could at least define something of a football field upon which to play a language game with the caveat that the game we play is but a small attempt to understand something as potentially as vast as the Savannah.
Welcome. I appreciate what seems to be genuine and carefully considered thought/belief about the subject matter. That said, I'm wondering...
Have you read the thread? I'm guessing not, because some of the concerns expressed above are clearly shared by a few of us already here. We've been parsing these things out... methodically.
I liked this question...
Quoting thedeadidea
This is precisely what some of us have been at pains to set out. I invite you to peruse the recent discussion from it's beginning.
What consensus did you come to then ?
That is exactly what needs to be enumerated. Until then, assuming genuine interest and given that only eight minutes passed between my reply and yours, I suggest that you read the thread carefully. Page 12 or so seems a good starting point...
I think the current general line of thinking began on page sixteen. Although, there were very relevant considerations prior to that page as well.
Coincidence or moral transgression?
You're welcome. No judgment.
I'm actually reading through it again myself. I want to enumerate the agreements. It's time - I think - to circle back towards the necessary social aspects. A few of you were doing a remarkable job of that prior to my arrival. I just wanted to offer some background guidelines.
My fan club finds my writing morally reprehensible.
:halo:
I'm still curious to see how far we can take it, and what it will look like when we arrive to a reasonable conclusion. And, after the wave of interlopers that invaded earlier today, I would say that the methodology is solid, and will at least stand up to, more or less, weak contention.
Do you mean when I said: "interlopers"? If so, there's a fine line between personal attack and calling it how it is, and I sometimes have trouble finding it.
Never mind, irrelevant.
I find your avatar morally reprehensible, seeing that your name is creativesoul. Unless you are using it for irony. Then it's perfect . :grin:
@creativesoul
Ok, time to get back on track...
We were investigating the relation between the cultured individual (viz. one imbued with a linguistic faculty), and ethical authority. This variable stands between (is delimited by) societal conditioning, and what we have provisionally hypothesized to be the internalization of societal ethics.
( Add. I would guess that the process by which ethics are learned has many similarities to the way language is learned. The main difference is that language acquisition only changes the mode of assessment/valuation - how we approximate what seems to be; whereas with the acquisition of ethical consciousness, assessment/valuation becomes secondary to judging - thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour.
An example of assessment might be,: "don't touch the fire or you will bet burned." Judgment would sound like "don't murder, it is wrong." Hence, if someone commits murder, they are judged to be bad in this instance. Yet if someone touches the fire and is burned, the person is not judged to be bad in this instance, only assessed as being stupid/crazy/masochistic/&c.
It is important to remember that all judgements are associated with one assessment or another. )
:rofl:
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Simple, but a re-re-restart.
Quoting creativesoul
To say: "it is wrong to touch the fire because it is stupid to burn oneself in such a way," amounts to a judgement upon an assessment of the stupity of touching fire. Imo, to call judgement a "re-evaluation" does not adequately express its essential charge, or quantity, in contrast to an assessment.
This only serves to elucidate the necessary distinction between assessment and judgement.
I'm also interested in examining the relation of ethical authority to ethical principle, it might be relevant.
I'm not. You're having trouble with the conventional sense of the term is you are if you are thinking that there's not a connotation of something being external initially.
Quoting praxis
It doesn't make sense with respect to the conventional connotation of the term "internalized." It's not a word to use for that context if that's what you want to say and you want anyone to understand it.
I abandoned the discussion when it began to be filled with gibberish. I am of the opinion that all of the gibberish you've been indulging for pages, which is currently permitted over various topics, should be confined to a single discussion. The title should be something like, "Creativesoul's Gibberish About Thought/Belief, Existential Dependency, And All The Rest".
Although clearly I am not a fan. Far from it. You, on the other hand...
Clearly that doesn't bother him. On the contrary, he must get a kick out of it. He's enthusiastically adopted creativesoul's gobbledygook, and he doesn't even seem embarrassed about it.
Yep. I don't think I've ever read such meaningless nonsense. I've been tempted a few times to try and ask for some clarity, but it's been like trying to do an MOT on a pile of scrap metal that may be used to be a car. Where do you start?
So how would you word it?
A pile of scrap metal posses no traffic safety issue or emissions issue, so you wouldn't need to start. If for some reason there were an issue you would naturally begin with the most egregious violation. Surely you know enough to identify the most egregious error, yes?
Depends on whether some idiot has placed it in the middle of the motorway so that people can sycophantically discuss how smooth the ride is.
Quoting praxis
I'm not sure one would, at least not in this metaphor. One would simply say an entirely new car was required.
Why don't you simply use "habitualize"?
Okay let's drop the metaphor. Can you identify the most egregious error so far? Or if that's too difficult for you, many just pick one of the worst.
Says the one who indulges in more unphilosophical gibberish than any other TPF member. Don't be upset just because you cannot understand what's being discussed.
Not even peanuts. The Interlopers consistently provide nothing to any discussion, nothing but whining and bitching about how they don't agree with anything. If anything, their comments are worth D's nuts.
I don't think you understand. The interlopers haven't read anything except your last post. They have no clue what has been happening here.
Primarily, this is supposed to be a discussion about the source of morals. No one has defined either what is meant by 'source', nor what is meant by 'morals'. A discussion cannot even start without that, and I don't mean by that some kind of anthropological investigation into all the ways the word is used (that would be pointless unless we are to invoke some kind of global wordsmith who ensures all our uses are compatible). I mean a commitment to a class of uses. We can start there.
Ok, here it is.
Source: that which provides the conditions for something else.
Morals: concerning what is right and wrong in human behavior
Source of morals: that which provides the conditions for what is right and wrong in human behavior
In sociology and other social sciences, internalization (or internalisation) means an individual's acceptance of a set of norms and values (established by others) through socialisation.
~https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internalization_(sociology)
So an instruction booklet on badminton would be a source of morals? Since it provides conditions under which a particular move is right or wrong? Badminton is an example of human behaviour, no?
Right, so that it was something external prior to the internalization.
The problem is that you can't literally have morals/morality, values, etc. that are external.
So the theory is flawed, because it has an errant ontology. That's just the point. We're talking about the source of something. We can't do that very well with misconceived ontology.
That is what we are seeking to work out in our thought experiment.
An instruction booklet on badminton would, indeed, be a source of morals if we could show it to be an ethical authority, or if it could be said to act by judging itself to be good or bad.
So then, your morals, and praxis' morals are internal to me. That seems odd, to say the least.
There you go again, imposing your irrational solipsist loop on us. Some one's theory is indeed flawed. :brow:
Creativesoul and Merk have put a good deal of effort into attempting to develop a universal criterion for what counts as a moral thing.
@creativesoul
It seems, I have my own fan club.
I appreciate those with the patience and prescience to work out their thoughts systematically. Unfortunately there are very few who possess the wherewithal to do this. Most get bogged down in semantics and rhetorical drivel over definitions. And, we are left with flimsy argument by ellipsis.
I would find it much more interesting if more philosophers would develop their systems alongside each other so that they could be compared and contrasted. (You, creativesoul, and I have corrected many errors that we presupposed by doing this.)
I was thinking about the distinction between ethical authority and moral agency. The ethical authority always judges the other - it determines right and wrong. The moral agent judges himself - he decides how he ought to behave. His judgement can be based on authority (the approval of another), yet on a deeper level, it can be grounded in principle (obligatory duty).
Quoting hachit
Strikethrough and bolding are my suggestions. Moral issues are often politicized to promote a particular party or ideology. Things like abortion and capital punishment are used by politicians to whip-up support for themselves or their party, without really caring about the moral issue. Unfortunately, it's typical for this to be more about gaining and maintaining wealth and power than it is for promoting human flourishing.
There are theories of moral developmental reasoning. I think kohlberg's is considered a little out of date.
I didn't mean to invoke Kohlberg. :grin: