Humanity's Morality
I've struggled with the idea of morality being subjective for quite some time now; I really want some things to be objectively moral - or to at least avoid cultural relativism. I think a good start for moral axioms is to recognize what most people most of the time would consider moral or immoral behavior (I've heard something like this before but I can't remember who said it). This avoids many of the pitfalls of cultural relativism because the "most people most of the time" bit transcends many, if not most cultural barriers. For instance, premeditated killing is condemned in the majority of cultures. One could expand the group of those that believe that one should not engage in premeditated killing to include people in every culture that have this belief and make it the numerator in a ratio. if one then makes the denominator the total number of people in humanity, given the ratio is greater than 0.5, relative to humanity, murder is wrong. Thus, cultural relativism is avoided. Is there a flaw in my thinking? The same thing would apply for determining whether or not something is immoral: the ratio would have to be less than 0.5.
Comments (158)
Quoting Aleph Numbers
And therefore in most countries there are laws preventing it. What else do you want?
Does the different resultant moral axioms from different time periods avoid relativism? (I'd say they don't, but perphaps you see "cultural relativism" differently than me.)
By trying to define a morality based on common use, aren't you not forsaking a logically necessary, a priori definition of morality?
And where does the - even if individual and subjective - logical need and justification [i]for[/I] a morality comes from? That is, that which makes individuals to have a morality in first place.
Wouldn't make more sense to extract the principles that give birth to a morality system?
What you described is moral relativism. You’ve just shifted the focus on consensus.
If I understand you, then under your view slavery is moral since most of the cultures in the world at one point agreed it was.
I dont think morality needs to be “objective”, it is sufficient to have an objective standard, a metric that can be used to take moral measurements. The analogy I use is a measuring tape, in inches. An inch is not “objective”, it is arbitrary, a human made it up and started measuring things with it. So its basis is still subjective, but once established it can be used as an objective standard; no matter where you go, how human perceptions makes distances appear different between one person and another, where or when you take a measurement etc an inch will always be an inch. If something is 12 inches long, it doesnt matter what someones opinion is, its always going to be 12 inches long.
I view morality in this way, a metric is chosen and used to make moral “ measurements”.
Well the views of the slaves would only matter if they were the ones forming the consensus. This is the problem with morality by consensus, the minority moral positions wouldnt matter.
If consensus is your metric, then you allow for moral validity even to positions that are clearly biased, misguided or irrational.
My mistake on objective morality, I thought you were positing a moral system with the aim of avoiding moral relativism and assumed you were going for something “objective”.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
Ok, so your view has some similarity to mine but you are positing the metric “consensus” as your “inch” (to stick with the analogy), is that correct?
I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but it wouldn't answer one need for the participants, that is, sometimes, to find a moral solution that is "universally good". Even if it is not possible, it is goal that people usually have in mind.
Say, for example, that most of the world approves some form of repression of gay people. If we have reason to believe that there's no sense in that, we wouldn't be willing to accept such moral belief, even if it is considered consensus.
Unless I misunderstood you, in case you can correct me.
As an aside that doesn't add much, for me, personally, ethics is even more objective than moral, because while moral makes a rule for "right or wrong", and this rule may have nothing to do with the actual consequences of an act (such as being gay, for example, that doesn't harm other people), ethics is worried with the interpersonal consequences of an act. That is, what is the effect of something on others.
Yes, you are also making good points. Just because the people in the minority are wrong right now doesn't mean they always have to be wrong; perhaps it would serve an even greater good in the future to defy what is considered right right now. Thus, certain axioms would only be right some of the time. One axiom might be thrown out in favor of another if it would better serve the coming present consensus. This could take the form of accelerating the consensus along to what it will be in the future given enough time. Sorry if that is a copout.
Isn't this the fallacy of appeal to the majority? That more people have a certain belief doesn't make that belief true. There was a time when almost everyone believed the earth was flat. We now know the earth isn't flat.
That said, the very notions of subjectivity and objectivity seem tied to your approach to morality, a probabilistic approach. Although, to me, there's something deeply flawed in how probability is used in making the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity I will simply regurgitate the official position which is that the probability that something is objective increases with the number of people reporting that something. This view fits perfectly with your probabilistic model of objective morality in that if the ratio of number of people believing a certain moral claim as true to the total number of people is greater than 0.5 then this moral claim is objective. :chin:
Ok, in that case I think my criticism stands. Consensus morality is problematic, but that doesnt mean it doesnt have utility. Is there some utility or advantage you feel consensus has over other metrics?
You mentioned a stabilising effect...but stabilising effects come in many forms and not all of them moral in any conventional sense. For exsmple you could have teo warring tribes. Unstable. Genocide of one or both tribes would have a stabilising effect but I would argue thats an immoral utility.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
Well, I do think thats a bit if a copout if Im being honest. You are making an appeal to the vagaries of how things might play out over time. That seems much to nebulous to serve as an adequate moral metric. I think your idea here is going to need a lot of utility to balance out these flaws and agin if you want me to be honest I think there are many superior metrics one could use over consensus without having to struggle so much to find merit in it. So now I would ask you what it is that moral consensus accomplishes that other more conventional moral metrics do not (or do less well)? You would have to demonstrate the superiority of consensus, and you have my attention and interest sir so lets hear it.
I already answered this, see above.
I agree and the probabilistic model for moral objectivity you propose is true to the way all matters of objectivity are handled in other areas - the more people reporting an observation, the greater the odds of it being true. :up:
This will have to wait until tomorrow. Sorry. But I'll definitely get back to it.
As a courtesy Im letting you know I do not like you, have no use for what you write (I ignore it as much as I can) and have no intention of engaging you.
So there is no need to waste your time directing comments at me.
Neither truth or quality can be dictated or restricted on the basis of offense, which is just one's emotive psychology thwarting more objective considerations. See John Stuart Mill, Essay on Liberty Chapter 2. It is a hard lesson but one that every serious thinker must eventually come to terms with.
No problem.
Unfortunately you've led yourself right back into cultural relativism I'm afraid. :/ What you would be attempting to describe is our global moral culture. However there is a huge problem when you try to bring numbers into it. Which is fallacy by majority. It's entirely possible for that ratio to not only be above 0.5 for murder but also belief in non-moral matters. Like physics. Just because the ratio might have once been at 0.9 for both deadly blood sports and the Earth being flat, doesn't mean that either were correct in the moral or the physical sense of the word 'correct'.
Now, it can work that way in votes for laws and such. Which you can think of as experimental ethics if that helps. Something being legal doesn't mean it is right amd something being illegal doesn't mean it is wrong. That's not a true global culture though due to our nationalism status quo and disenfranchisement within those nations of potential voting demographic. Not every country is a democracy either.
If you want to go for the Jugular of Cultural Relativism, use Descriptive relativism and focus on the Moral Culture here on this forum.
One thing I think we can all agree on, is that part of our culture here, is we are all freely allowed to question the morals of other cultures. Would you agree with that? This forum wouldn't really exist without us all having this unwritten social rule buried within the forum culture.
Yet Cultural Relativists all over the world, claim it is wrong to question or criticize other people cultures. So occurs a contradiction within the structure of the argument for cultural relativism because it is obvious that not all of us here share the same moral beliefs at all. Yet Cultural relativists would claim that our moral truths are based on our culture. A complete impossibility within the culture of this forum.
The same is true of every culture. Disagreement from within. Untouchables in India probably don't want the Caste system. So it's not a cultural truth of Indian culture that the caste system is just okay, in fact, individuals from every caste have moral objections to the caste system. So even asserted cultural rules about whether or not untouchables even get a say don't matter since individual members of every caste take issue with them having to be called "untouchables" in the first place instead of "Fellow Indian" "Countrymen" "Friend" "Neighbour".
Individual relativism doesn't really work either. I can have the intent to morally help people, yet be indecisive about how, who or why and can still harm even if I intend otherwise. I can have conflict within both inner and external dialogues which makes me look back and say "I was wrong for doing that.". It's not that our beliefs changed and it was right in the past but wrong for you to do now. You say "I was wrong" past tense, meaning you now believe it was wrong both then and now. Unless you only believe it was wrong in that context but may have been right in another. For example punching someone unprovoked = "I was wrong" vs Punching someone trying to stab you = "It isn't wrong to punch someone trying to stab you".
Descriptive Contextual Relativism is a bit harder to deconstruct. The act of punching someone being morally wrong or right is relative to the context in this view and is a form of neo-pragmatic consequentialism.
Although I think Educational psychologist William Perry might have coined the term Contextual Relativism but in relation to student cognitive development.
I'm not so sure about this. I think on this forum it eventually comes down to how many people our questions offend, which is backward because the essence of philosophy is negation.
I was using this forum as an example of a place where such a belief could be argued to be part of the culture. Would you prefer the culture of an ethics classroom as an example? Or would you say that there are some justifiable taboos in all cultures in general? Including an ethics classroom? Very interested to hear your thoughts.
You'll also need to PM me at some point and explain the Polemic School of thought in more detail. I had a brief look at that and found it fascinating. Are you the organiser for that meetup group? PM soon!
As to "The essence of philosophy is negation" can you explain in more detail what you mean by that and also justify the claim for me? I don't know if I agree with that. I'd say the essence of philosophy is Delineation. Or maybe I mean the purpose of philosophy? What do we even mean by essence? Too far? It's 3 am here, so I'm honestly running on fumes, so I apologise if I've not made sense, especially for that last question, too Meta for this late at night I feel!
The problem with popularism is that we often find bygone popular behaviour morally reprehensible.
How much does it matter to you whether there is one rule that all must obey or everyone has their own near-identical rule hewn from a rough template? And why does it matter, if it does?
Most elementary ethics reduces to describing social rather than individualistic behaviour. (Some, written by psychopaths, flip it, while complex ethics arise from complex environments.) We are, genetically, driven toward both. Given that genetically we are much of a muchness and given that genetics is assumed to describe objectively real things, is this objective enough? And given that we are not all exactly the same, is this relativist enough?
I'm proposing making a subjective consensus can then be used as an objective standard insofar as multiple cultures are concerned, not objective axioms. Furthermore, if one defines "good" or "moral" as "acceptable behavior for most humans some of the time" then the axioms that result from the process I describe are indeed correct morally.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
What does this even mean?
Quoting DingoJones
Well, there is the example of health care: nobody wants to be denied care or bankrupted by a visit to the hospital. The majority of people, in the US at least, want universal health care to be instituted, but because of garbage neo-liberal politicians this policy has not been passed. The morality I propose would give strong ground upon which to criticize corrupt politicians. Thus, consensus, and the morality I propose, could potentially help overcome a flawed democracy, and, ultimately, result in considerable happiness. Furthermore, certain despicable and backwards practices could be condemned and eliminated, such as fgm. I'll try to think of more ways that consensus has utility.
We are all genetically similar.
I would suggest that meta-ethical relativism (moral relativism) should not be considered necessarily frivolous. You do not need objective morality to advocate for the death penalty of people doing something you can consider abhorrent and you do not need to acquiesce your viewpoint merely because you see morality has no "true" answer. You can be the fiercest, unrelenting thinker on moral issues if you want to be.
There are serious and unforgivable things that other cultures consider okay, you can label them as horrible degenerates, no problem. Personally, I think morality is 100% subjective and has no truth value but I do not accept this as a licence for all actions and views, I don't care what your culture is. I don't think morality functions much different whether you think it's objective or subjective.
I just think we need to be honest and upfront with why morality exists as a force in society and you can explain that without relying on "it's objectively true". Firstly, there's logic/validity/reason/reasonableness.
Secondly, there's fairness, compassion, empathy, love and so on. Anger about these kinds of things is infectious and easy to justify and has an emotive aspect not necessarily present in just saying "God said so" or something.
Right, but Im asking about the utility of your consensus morality over and above other moral metrics. The examples you list here are not unique to a consensus view, in fact I would say that those things are better accomplished by other metrics that do not have the problems that your consensus morality does.
In the sense of functionality.
Well, it is functional in the sense that most people's intuitive senses of what is right and wrong would often win out, while also making room for the potential for change in moral axioms over time. A moral axiom that would apply now could later be thrown out if the consensus changes, and thus more potential for rational discourse to change people's beliefs. I say rational discourse because it is not concerned with making moral statements, which would by definition be wrong if they were made by the minority, but rather with eliminating beliefs that are not reasonable given certain axioms. These axioms could actually be moral and be arrived at through the process outlined in the OP. Thus, there is the potential for progress and the establishment of new consensuses that lead to more flourishing and happiness.
I understand consensus morality can accomplish what other moral metrics do, but I think your metric has to win by comparison. Thats the point im trying to make.
What is it about your consensus morality that makes it better than other metrics we already use that do not share the same flaw as consensus morality? To me it seems you must demonstrate not only how consensus morality is better than conventional moral metrics but also how it compensates for the serious drawback of morality essentially being a popularity contest that will inevitably rob minority moral views of validity.
Other moral metrics accomplish the same things your suggesting moral consensus does but without leaving out potentially vast swaths of people/moral views. If the majority (say 51%) are deciding right and wrong then 49% of the spectrum is being excluded. Thats problematic, not the society or moral system id choose to live in.
Well a utilitarian calculation accomplishes the same thing as far as I can tell, for example. Pretty much every moral system I can think of are attempting to address the things you referenced. Some of those are flawed and some are not, but you would have to demonstrate to what degree your moral consensus view is better than the ones im supposed to be rejecting.
I dont think the consensus part of your equation is needed anymore in that case. Its rational discourse that would then be your metric.
Consensus would still be relevant in order to have objective standards for morality. The meta-axioms would need to be run through the consensus finding process I outlined in order to be objective standards, and, if the majority pays attention to the discourse, maybe they will be swayed.
The objective standards are being created by rational discourse as you outlined. You are adding the extra consensus step to hang onto the consensus morality, but its not necessary for what you just described. What is necessary for what you just described is rational discourse. Unfortunately I think your idea doesnt work.
The Nazis are often considered an extreme example of immorality. The Nazis sought to take over the entire European continent by force, exterminating all those they found inconvenient and enslaving the rest. We here in America were outraged, found the Nazis to be morally abhorrent and joined the fight against the Nazis, full of enthusiastic sincere conviction that we were morally superior.
And what did the Nazis want to do? The very same thing America had only recently finished doing on the North American continent, sweeping race based genocide and enslavement.
What's interesting is how thoroughly convinced Americans of that era were that there was a profound difference between American history and Nazi goals. This is fascinating given that we had completed the genocide of native peoples only a generation before the rise of Nazism, and were still lynching blacks in earnest during the Nazi era.
Point being, does the rampant self delusion which is a consistently reliable part of the human condition makes intelligent discussion of morality possible?
The former.
To me, what you are describing here would be an interesting form of democracy and an ideal situation to me. I do take issue with the word axiom being used in talk of Ethics and meta-ethics because I don't know if we have the required faculties for axiomatic thinking. We aren't computers.
Indeed, I agree with that.
I think that is an interesting related question as well. It made me think of large groups or institutions that are immoral, and how and in what ways the individuals within that organisation are morally culpable.
Well its related because group consensus would be at play, but individuals might not agree with the group consensus yet none the less remain in the group.
Would the individual more morally required to self terminate their membership in the group?
I don't think groups of people can be moral agents. Groups are after all comprised of individuals, the actions of which, taken together, may be (strictly speaking, incorrectly) generalized as actions of the group.
Motivations and circumstance, rather than the action itself, are, in my eyes, way more important in judging the morality of a certain action. In what way can it ever be said that the motivations and circumstances of all a groups' members are exactly the same?
Alright, then what about the second part?
Quoting Tzeentch
But how does this all relate to making the determinant of a moral action being a ratio of people who approve versus disapprove?
Whether you say ratio or percent it makes no difference. You're still appealing to the majority. Which means you are harming your own argument which is probably being made out of intuition. If it is being made out of intuition, trust that intuition but figure out how to make your points without making a logical fallacy if you can. If the argument is logically sound then it should speak for itself and convince me of its strength, despite my skepticism. It's extremely difficult for me to adhere to a principle of charity and adhere to a principle of healthy and reasonable skepticism at the same time when your conclusion itself is a fallacy.
You also assume 7 billion+ humans are the majority. We declaw cats, we forcefully and without consent sterilise domesticated and wild animals. Sometimes not even for medical reasons like Ovarian or testicular cancer either, the medical consensus in terms of ethics here is that even if I have testicular cancer, I can opt to refuse all specific ball removing treatments in favour of something less mutilating if I want to. Whether that is successful or not I don't know. The point is, the consensus or ratio here among medical professionals, it's above 0.5 within that field, (at least functionally it is but I've not specifically polled that question in either that or a global demographic.) is I have the right to refuse this treatment even if adhering to a principle of retaining human dignity, which might ultimately lead to my death. Retaining Human Dignity in this case could be viewed by others as unjustifiable pride. Which would mean my death would be my fault and so would the emotional consequences of the fallout, for my loved ones and for my potential to help humanity which would be lost due to my own arrogance.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
While I did previously infer this, not the ones you or I have at the moment. Which operate algorithmically and heuristically, not axiomatically, as do me and you on a conscious level. There might be arguments to be made for axiomatic thinking on the subconscious level. In programming a group of algorithms can work axiomatically to some extent but conflicts, fallibility and bias of designer and data inputter doesn't help. Hence computer glitches and crashes etc.
Now as for Quantum Computing... Whole other ball game but might be slightly less fallible than it's designer, might be. However I suspect that even that will have shortcomings and whatever might be next after that too.
The reason conscious level thinking can't be axiomatic is something I'd like to be able to explain, but I haven't got the Time. ;) enjoy that riddle haha.
This might help explain.
I'll say it again then: if I define morality as "what is considered good behavior by most people some of the time" that means that if most people believe something is the correct thing to do morally it is the moral thing to do in the appropriate circumstances. Not a fallacy.
Quoting MSC
That is an interesting problem: animals are people too. I guess humans just need to advocate for better treatment of animals.
I am asking because there has been examples of what we call good and what we call bad. But there has no discerntion between good and right and between bad and wrong. If it's bad, it's wrong, and the right thing to do is to do something that is good for everyone.
Where is the moral compass? What can you say about something bad that is still moral? Something bad that is still moral, yet it contains no good that counter-effects the bad?
This is what I need to hear before I can seriously engage on a talk about morality. Morality exists, but we never touched upon what its hallmarks are. Please tell me what it is about morality that makes it different from everything else, and most prominently different from good and bad.
Quoting god must be atheist
Brah, are you drunk? I have no idea what you are talking about here either:
Quoting god must be atheist
Yes it is. If every animal on Earth wanted to destroy the potential for life on Mars and destroy Mars with a death star it wouldn't make it right. You'd be missing the whole point of the idea of majority consensus in a biocentric model.
Why should anyone have to engage with a definition of morality is majority rules? What if the majority rules to kill the minority out of an extremely incorrect assessment of that minorities ability to destroy the whole community of life?
Let's look at the Infinite Gauntlet Thanos issue, lets Say Thanos offers to let us have a vote. The first question being. Should we have a meaningful vote on whether or not thanos should kill whomever is in the minority on this question? You'd essentially consign that entire minority ti death whether they are a moral relativist or not and you assume the majority is smart enough to know what is and isn't right and wrong in any given situation. It might seem moral in the moment because everyone voted it so, but if we have a vote 30 years later to punish the majority in the last two votes for enabling thanos to kill the minority, then there is a contradiction. Time makes the difference. It doesn't matter what the majority might vote for if a later majority can find the same context and the same principles morally abhorrent later. This is why it is a Fallacy, because it leads to a contradiction.
Listen, everyone makes fallacies and you're not expected to be perfect all the time. Fallacies are what they are for a reason.
Now, it would be also be a fallacy of me to assume that because you argument has a fallacy in it, it might not have merit. The point is you have to show me that merit. So far you have in some ways but not by clinging to fallacy by majority. That's just my honest observation. You can not agree if you want but unless you have redefined a number of the words you used then what you said to me does not mean what you want it to mean. If that is the case, then you'll need to delineate on a few of your definitions in order for it to not appear as a fallacy because you've given me no good logical argument as to why I shouldn't see it as a fallacy.
who is doing the considering? The same people that act the way they consider appropriate behaviour? Or in fact there are people who act against their own best judgment, and are considered to be behaving appropirately by at least one person outside that group?
The additonal qualifyer "some of the time" completely obliterates any usefully tangible meaning in this attempt at a definition of morality. Thanks for putting that in.
Obviously it is not I who haven't read your 2+ pages of posts, but it is you who were too lazy or inept to read my only one post.
Quoting god must be atheist
The majority of humanity.
Quoting god must be atheist
It actually makes it considerably more cogent: certain acts are only moral at certain times, depending upon the situation and the agents' motives. Surely you do not believe that any given act could be moral in every situation?
Then how does this view produce anything objective? I'm asking, since that is the goal you seemed to have set out at the start of this thread. This seems about as subjective as it comes.
Absolutely not.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
You are answering a question I did not ask. Which is fine. I don't mind if you exercise your right to free speech. Just saying that you are hedging, but I can't fault you for that. To wit: My question is, what is it about morality that ultimately, unambiguosly, and clearly delineates it from other human considerations? I ask, because my point is that though it may exist, humanity has not found out what it is, and therefore all speeches and conversations about morality that purport to make a point are futile.
Here's an example of an argument that although contains a fallacy, kind of rings true, since if pressed they would use your own linguistic reactions to honest criticism as the premises for this conclusion.
You cherry pick from parts of my responses too and ignore everything that you don't seem interested in trying to refute. Which means you're not being charitable to me and are trying to misrepresent my own words back to me even though I can literally observe you missing all the detail and nuance I didn't have to take the time to carefully craft, for you. You are literally getting a lot of what I perceive to be my and everyone elses most valuable resource, time.
I second this question. I'd like to know too.
Yes, I get it. I still don't think it is fallacious, but I'll think about it some more.
Quoting god must be atheist
An act which leads towards the true happiness of the individual that commits it.
The core here is the first Socratic paradox "All men desire the Good"; in other words, everyone does those things that they think will make them happy. The sad part is, what we think makes us happy is more often than not based on fears, ignorances, delusions, etc., many of which are deeply engrained since childhood.
The more one exposes these matters which cloud our judgement, the closer one will be able to see what it is that will make them truly happy, and thus learn to act morally.
What if morality is relative to context, not humanity? Descriptive contextual relativism.
I'm going to argue from some of your points that I can agree with, so you know I'm being fair and that your words do have the power to move the conversation along in a functional and helpful way.
A majority is perfectly capable of not knowing the full context of any given situation.
The best way to describe the difference between an honest moral mistake and a malicious moral act is individual or group knowledge of context.
If I know he full context of a given situation but still argue against it = malicious act.
The idea of moral progress requires honest moral mistakes. I think you would benefit by looking out some books of logic problems to really get into this point. I can't remember the one I'm thinking of off the top of my head but I can describe how it works.
There are a number of good logic problems where the question is essentially "How many times do you have to guess incorrectly to know what the right answer is?"
An honest moral mistake is made when someone believes the way are acting in a way that benefits others but our experience of the context isn't full enough to realistically be expected to make the right answer.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
Because when the full context is known and language is sophisticated enough to explain that, there would be an objective moral answer for any given situation. So in that situation the majority is only right when it is contextually objectively right. If they are wrong, then it's just wrong.
The thing about relativism in most of it's forms, is that it claims there are no objective moral absolutes, but it doesn't make that claim of itself. It posits itself as the only moral truth. So if descriptive contextual relativism is the only moral truth, then it's central claim that there are no objective moral absolutes, truth or knowledge is not true. So how could relativism be true?
Immediately begging the question “what about if true individual happiness means murder, rape and torture?”
How do you exclude that?
They are driven by a need to resolve childhood trauma, slavish obedience to their basic impulses, or mental defects. All sorts of things that need to be resolved before an individual can understand what true happiness means for them.
I'd call BS and say that this individual is contextually incapable of knowing what true happiness is, because they are in fact truly miserable and deluding themselves.
With all due respect, Tzeentch, my question was not that; and answering a changed question amounts to answering it.
But I appreciate that you want to spark discussion, without answering my question. That's perfectly acceptable.
Just please don't mix the two: spark a conversation at the cost of paraphrasing my question to a totally different one, and pretending that you answered it.
Otherwise carry on, my job here is finished.
Very appropriate to point out.
Based on what? Sophisticated language and deep contextual knowledge does not give an objective moral answer to anything. Were do the facts that inform the act come from? An objective answer to a moral question does not follow from descriptive claims, this is just the gap between is and ought, unless I'm mistaken.
Quoting MSC
Could you explain to me what that is?
These are all reasonable questions and I'm sorry for not addressing this myself sooner. As I noticed that in some of your other comments you felt your questions have not been given a fair shake.
I don't know how much of my comments to @Aleph Numbers you have gotten the chance to read. Did you feel any of what I said answered any of those questions for you? All, none or a few?
I will attempt to answer them but I want you to have the time to critique what I've already said to others so I can see where our understandings have overlapped and where they are at odds. Will probably make it easier for me to answer your questions in a way where they are true attempts at direct answers, whether you agree with them or not. Sound fair?
I have one question so far, and that is, what is it in a moral act that distinguishes it from other acts, as being moral (or immoral).
My point is that the criteria for morality has not been found yet.
You ask me to read your posts and answer them directly. I might do it after you reply to this to do it still.
I will present a few ideas what people think morals are, and I show you that they are indistinguishable from other acts.
-- that makes the actor feel good and truly happy. Indistinguishable from other things that make us happy, such as child birth, wedding, falling in love. Is falling in love a moral act, in and by itself? It's not even in your power when you do.
-- that which most people approve of. Most people approve of holding the fork and knife properly, of driving on the proper side of the road, of not kicking dogs. Is not kicking dogs actually a moral act, in and by itself? Is not raping children a moral act? No, raping children is immoral by consensus, but not raping them is not moral per se.
-- heroic acts: sacrificing one's own health, wealth, family, even life, for the good of the community or for loved ones. Is working overtime to make a boss's or capitalist life better, at the cost of destroying your own health a moral act?
-- acts that make most or all people feel better, or their lives better, easier, happier. This is indistinguishable from being "good" or "bad", in case of the opposite.
-- a decision has to be involved; a moral decision. You see your child drowning in a lake; you jump in, without thinking. This is a moral act; yet no decision took place. So it is indistinguishable from a good Samaritan act.
-- serving god. Well, it is not moral to kill, according to the ten commandments, but refrain from murder is indistinguishable from harm avoidance: you burn in hell if you do cross god.
-- etc.
In any of the foregoing, the act which we call moral, and its essential qualifier, can be found in acts that are not moral. Not immoral, but just not moral. And therefore I claim that humans have not found the magic formula for calling any act truly moral, whether the act is actually moral or not.
A moral act is an act you are compelled to take. Essentially it is what you ought to do. This is different from deciding what cereal to eat in the morning, or whether or not to exercise thirty minutes a day, or to work over time. People have different ideas of what one ought to do in certain situations, but the gap between is and ought means that moral acts are different from acts that are just approved of, for instance. It is a descriptive claim to say that most people approve of driving on the right side of the road, but to say one ought to is to transition to a moral claim.
I ought to have cleaned the chicken coop before the inspectors came.
Have I committed a moral act? I ought to. Is this different from other ought to-s?
I ought to have married Bob instead of Mary. Is this a moral ought to?
Should I give to the poor? I ought to. So I do. -- is this a moral act, or a compulsion to do good?
I hear what you say, Aleph, but I am not convinced that a sheer "ought" is the kernel of what morality is.
And you deny that moral acts involve a decision. Others say that a decision is ESSENTIAL to human morality. (You wrote: A moral act is an act you are compelled to take.) You are also compelled to roll the dice at a crap shoot game when you are losing. If you separate out the factor of "compel", then it is indistinguishable from other forms of acting but moral.
Quoting god must be atheist
I'm not saying one isn't deciding; I'm saying that if one wants to be moral they have to decide a certain way. As for the oughts you provided: they do not serve a greater goal or project, except for the giving to the poor one. In fact I think an ought would have to serve an a priori morality. So while it would have saved you some headache if you had cleaned the chicken coop, the consequences do not feed into anything greater than a conviction that you should have saved yourself some trouble. Indeed, two of your oughts are appeals to prudence, not morality.
This involves neither decision, nor a goal of good. This is what you said no? In your entire paragraph or post that contained this, you mentioned nothing of good, or making a decision.
I go by your first definition as per above. If you want to improve on it, fine, but please don't tell me but only when you got to the final result. I don't want to be bogged down with every last minute detail in the making, please gimme that much peace.
Please present me with a final decision what is moral, and I'll show you it is indistinguishable from other acts. Thanks.
That might be true of some people who murder, rape and torture but not all of them. Some people might do it just because they enjoy it, and those are the people im talking about. How would you exclude these people from being moral?
I didn't even make a reference to what is good in my last post. What are you referring to?
Woooo! Now we are talking! So we are at Hume, who believed we make moral judgements from emotional sentiment, not logic. Not what I believe exactly.
Logic is a tool for making sense of our experiences. Language is a tool for describing that experience.
This is true of our individual experiences and our collective experiences.
Your emotions are psychological, your cognitive reasoning facilities and ability to utilise logic are also psychological. Individual Emotional Psychological facts like "I fear Covid-19" are true if you are really afraid of covid-19 because you fear your death or a loved ones death. Collective social and moral truths are contingent on a few different things. Culture, Individuals, Psychology, Biology, and Physics. Now, keep in mind that those concepts here should not be conflated with the experts in the study of those concepts, who are individuals within academic field cultures. Same with me, I'm no expert.
There are Emotional and cultural facts about you for example. You are aware of some or most of them but not of others. Like everyone.
Ultimately since there is more experience within a collective, the collective is the thing that should be the object of the most judgement and responsibility for its moral behaviour. Which means to some extent individuals are the object of judgement and responsibility for what goes into the culture of that collective. Obviously some people bare much more responsibility on that due to the amount of power they wield on the modal quality of the moral culture of the collective. This is why most people intuitively feel it is wrong to blame poor people for their lot in life. No one individual knows the full context but we can get an emotional impression of it when exposed to experience of it from any perspective. It's also why I trust most people to be accurate in the claim that "they are treated unfairly" even if I don't agree with their estimation of the Why, as my view of the context will most likely be different than theirs.
The way you arrive at this conclusion, is to examine the historically contextual answers to the Is ought problem, Kant and Mills for example, and then contemporary ones like pragmatism and neo pragmatism etc, Negate the falsehoods and affirm the truths from all those proposed solutions until the modal quality meshes symbiotically between the different answers to the problem, balanced with the criticisms to those answers in a way that actually solves whatever problem is trying to be solved based on what the language identifies. While also accepting the truth of human fallibility when it comes to using tools like logic and language. The tools aren't the problem, the craftsman is. It's up to the craftsman to figure out if;
A) if he is using his tools correctly and
B) has the right tools for the job.
Quoting god must be atheist
That's nice to hear, not sure what I've done to earn the respect but thank you. It's returned in kind, even if we end up disagreeing.
Quoting god must be atheist
My claim: What distinguishes it from an act from an immoral act or a moral act, is truth relative to context, combined with a few moral imperatives based on self evident truths about the nature of the universe, the nature of life and the nature of humanity. The self evident truths about humanity is where I will introduce how this method works exactly while also highlighting its inherent fallibility born of my inherent fallibility as an individual who doesn't know the full context of the nature of life and the universe.
I am going to have to put a pause on this now but I will be ready to address the rest of your comment later. I have a zoom meeting in half an hour. Got voters in Wisconsin to write to. Vote Biden! (Note for Moderators, if my "vote biden" remark was against the rules or shouldn't be in this discussion, let me know and I'll remove it but please leave the rest of the comment intact if you use your discretion to remove it yourselves)
Same thing as with Tzeentch, there are people who hurt because they are hurting but there are also people who hurt because it makes them truly happy.
I don’t feel like this is controversial, but to illustrate Ill use the classic example of evil: The Nazi’s thought they were creating a better world, they were in the pursuit of true happiness, they thought they were doing good. Now maybe you can make the claim that not every Nazi felt this way, maybe even most of them had deep down pain and regret and it was all just acting out these deep psychological pains and sure, that might be true but you arent going to easily convince me Joseph Mandalay did. He was a monster, who took great pride and pleasure in his evil scientific pursuits. To him, the fact that these were human beings, that he was causing suffering, death, insanity etc didnt bother him, deep down or otherwise. Some people are born or conditioned by experience to derive true pleasure and happiness from inflicting pain or rape or whatever. You think Stalin, or Putin, or Ted Bundy wouldn't be happy if people just left them alone to do as they pleased? They’d slip into a depression would they? I dont think so.
Enjoying something and true happiness are not the same. True happiness is a prolonged state of being, and not some short-term gratification of base desires. Perhaps inner peace would be another term to describe it.
Quoting DingoJones
And they were wrong. Simply pursuing true happiness is not enough to be moral. One must achieve it for oneself. And if one actively works against it, then one can be said to be immoral. Thus, immoral actions lead to destruction of oneself, either physically or psychologically.
Quoting DingoJones
A blind person cannot see, no matter how much they believe it so. Similarly, a malicious person cannot find love or true happiness.
One may play the devil's advocate and ask how do we know that a blind person is truly blind and not simply acting to be, but I fail to see the point of that.
Quoting Tzeentch
What if someone derives inner peace from torturing small children? From causing immense amounts of suffering? I've known sadistic people, and they genuinely revel in others' suffering and misfortune.
Quoting Tzeentch
So being immoral prevents one from achieving true happiness because you say that if one doesn't achieve true happiness one is acting immorally. Sounds like a tautology to me, and, thus, one is always immoral as long as they are not achieving true happiness.
Then they are not truly happy, no matter what they may tell themselves. Or maybe they are mentally defect, in which case there's an argument to be made for them not being moral agents.
You're obviously playing the devil's advocate for the sake of doing so. It's not going to lead to anything productive. As I said, is a blind person truly blind, or is it all some elaborate ruse to fool people? Maybe they are seeing, we cannot look into their minds after all. It's very easy to play this game, but also pointless. Let's have a serious discussion.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
We haven't delved far enough into the idea to really start explaining how it works in detail, but this isn't what I've said. Let me state it clearly:
Acting in a way that works against one's true happiness is immoral.
Acting in a way that works towards one's true happiness is moral.
Acting in a way that works neither towards nor against one's true happiness is not a matter of morality.
If one does not achieve true happiness, one isn't necessarily immoral.
Thanks for elucidating that. I must say, that is pretty reasonable. And no, I wasn't playing devil's advocate, I genuinely believe that sadists can be truly happy doing sadistic things, but whatever, I'll drop it.
I find that this conversation is not all that relevant, . Can you relate it to the OP? I would like to talk about this with you, but you might want to make a thread yourself.
Then you don't have a moral theory. You're merely deferring a moral judgement to one about happiness, while insisting that a person is not the judge of their happiness but rather you are. You can bypass the middle man of happiness entirely and just insist on what is moral and what is not on a case-by-case basis, which is what you're doing with happiness.
Maybe.
Like I said, I haven't really gotten the chance to get into details yet.
Ultimately it is only the person themselves that can judge whether they are truly happy, and only they themselves that can validate the trueness of such a statement. I, on my part, can choose to believe them or not. If I see a truly miserable person state they are happy, I am going to doubt that statement, obviously.
What is central to my theory is that while every person desires to be happy, very few people actually know what it is that will make them truly happy. They may spend their lives chasing dreams of wealth and success (or have darker pursuits, as mentions) and end up unfulfilled and miserable. In fact, they may live their entire lives staying completely ignorant of what true happiness means for them!
What then becomes a central question is, why do people have such a hard time recognizing what it is that truly makes them happy?
And the answer seems to lie in the many layers of mud that are cast upon the individual's psyche from birth. Opinions of others (parents, society, school system, politicians, etc.) that have become internalized, and have formed the bedrock of our worldview, even though they may directly counteract our attempts at finding happiness.
Quoting Tzeentch
This actually seems like the no true Scotsman fallacy: If one acts in a way that is sadistic in order to achieve happiness, you say they never were actually pursuing true happiness. Your objective rule that one acts immorally in working against their own happiness then becomes relevant. But how is it known if doing sadistic things works against one's true happiness? Couldn't it be behavior unrelated to their happiness and thus not be immoral according to your third claim?
For sure, but in a moral theory that depends entirely on personal happiness, if you assume everyone to be lying about their happiness if the wrong moral fact is derived, you don't have a workable theory: it is circular. It is not a question of completeness: you have precisely demonstrated that you have not answered anything, merely deferred the question.
Human beings have both selfish and social drives, and satisfying either can be a source of happiness. A less extreme example might be a guy running off with a woman he's infatuated with, leaving his wife and five young children unsupported and none the wiser. This is unconstrained hedonism: the man is doing exactly what he wants undeterred by considerations of responsibility and consequences for others. The harm he causes far outstrips the benefit he enjoys; nonetheless I'm sure he's having a wonderful time.
Quoting Tzeentch
I completely agree that bad institutions, such as bad laws (or lack thereof), bad leaders, and religion can make people unhappy and/or immoral. But I've seen people ecstatic at the idea of an atheist being tortured for eternity and I've seen them do charity work because of their beliefs. It's not a straightforward mapping from one to the other.
More accurately, they would be pursuing true happiness (as do we all), but not achieving it.
We seem to be working with a hypothetical person who is both extremely malicious and truly happy. I don't necessarily believe such a person exists, but if you know any I'd love to hear about them.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
Ok, if I'm correct your question here, "Can one be sadistic without it affecting their efforts of achieving true happiness?", and I would answer no.
To carry out sadistic acts one either has to act in complete disregard of well-being, or be completely ignorant of well-being. If one, at some later point in life, gains insight into well-being, then they must see the pain they inflicted upon others and they will atone through guilt. This is karmic, in a way.
I looked up the definition of sadistic, it is defined as: "deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others". So yes, by definition sadism is related to deriving pleasure and is thus related to your proposed morality. But also you have to admit that if someone does something sadistic they are also, by definition, actually deriving pleasure from "inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others". The word you seem to be looking for would mean: "seeking pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others".
I disagree. I think there's a workable theory, however there is no simple 1+1=2 type of proof. But I've no desire to impose this system upon others. I use it to make sense of my own experiences and what I see in others.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
In this situation there are a few options:
1. The man carries out this act without regret, thus must be ignorant of matters such as love, compassion and the harm he inflicts upon others. One so ignorant, cannot be truly happy.
2. The man caries out this act and regrets it in the end, meaning the act did not contribute to his happiness.
So one can derive pleasure from something whilst at the same time not moving any closer to becoming truly happy. In fact, it may even move them away from such happiness.
I don't think it is fallacious. But it doesn't seem useful. Just as in morality-maximises-happiness all moral questions become questions about whether people are happy, populist morality just becomes questions about statistics. It becomes descriptive, with the only possible moral imperative: conform! The other obvious thing to point out is that morality is inevitably time-dependent if views can change over time. In addition, new moral questions, such as environmental action questions, become undefined until a majority view is formed.
Is it possible to change the moral views of one person? If yes, then presumably it is possible to change the moral views of many people (simply by changing the views of one person many times). If yes then we can build a random moral generator to define a set of putative moral truths, then convince the majority of people that those views are true. Morality is then random. Replace the generator with, say, journalism and morality becomes a dictatorship, or a competition between would-be dictators.
Where I align with your view is that, left to our own devices in simple environments (e.g. uncluttered by bad ideology, questionable social structures, and individualistic or otherwise antisocial incentives), I think how people behave is a better guide to morality than anything a philosopher has ever thought up. I'm not an anarchist by virtue of the fact that our environment is not conducive to anarchism, but I do believe that the only fundamental morality is that which our biology has equipped us with, that any additions and corrections are either arbitrary or a consequence of the environment we have made for ourselves even if those additions are necessary for decision-making within that environment, and that any moral claim that cannot be evaluated purely in terms of our biological drives can only be evaluated relativistically. I have had a thread on this and plan a follow-up soon.
There is again a circularity. His awareness of the harm he causes others now apparently overrides even the feeling of happiness. But this is precisely a utilitarian view of morality. Irrespective of how we get there, we have a single, fixed path from 'causes harm to others' to 'is immoral' that is impervious to the variable 'happiness', whether because it is unimportant or because you keep redefining happiness to get the answer you want.
m = m(h)
h = h(o)
-> m = m[h(o)] = m(o)
Morality is a function of happiness. Happiness depends on outcomes. Therefore morality is a function of outcomes. No considerations of happiness required.
Btw 'I feel happier' is an outcome, so one can even derive moral answers along the lines of 'yes, because it increases my personal happiness' on utilitarian grounds without redefining happiness to mean 'knowledge of the suffering of others', so long as no one suffers. E.g. I want a banana. Should I eat a banana? Yes. I want to stab babies. Should I stab babies? No.
On the other hand, you cannot get moral answers to even simple moral questions in your 'personal happiness'--based formalism without redefining personal happiness ad hoc to get the right outcome, which is what you've done in both of your replies to me. You may as well bite the bullet and embrace utilitarianism.
Like I said earlier in the thread, the people would need to be polled often enough that we would have time to implement the axioms that result from the process I outlined in the OP. This is also totally within the purview of the system I propose; through rational discourse one could persuade people to act in new ways via application of axioms that are established by consensus. Thus, the reformer is not always wrong and people can consider views that are not yet established via consensus. If the people are swayed by the discourse it will manifest itself in the polls.
Understandable.
I think the concept is too intricate to describe in a forum post. I'll give you a few terms that I relate to inner peace and I hope you can fill in some of the blanks yourself: Inner deconfliction, freedom of fear, openness to love and compassion, guided by reason.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
When properly examined, much problematic behavior stems from fear.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
When fears are properly examined, much of them are related to our desire to continue our physical existence. Fear of soical isolation, fear of poverty, fear of not procreating, etc. Perhaps that is a good definition of base desires.
The assertion that my theory amounts to "it causes harm to others, thus it is immoral" is way too hasty.
I understand. My point is that this isn't useful. The axioms are just statistics. One can do away with them and just tell people the statistics and have a single moral imperative: conform!
Quoting Aleph Numbers
But wouldn't those persuaders and persuadees be acting against morality by arguing against moral truths? If majority opinion is moral fact, then contrary opinion is also contrary to morality.
Unless your definition admits the possibility that personal happiness can be consistent with the suffering of others and still be considered good, you are merely defining morality in terms of a variable that is itself defined in terms of morality. If you claim that one cannot be truly happy if one causes suffering, then your are claiming that personal happiness is a function of moral considerations. If you simultaneously claim that moral goods are those that increase personal happiness, you have a circular argument.
If you want to avoid this, stop working from the top down and build your theory from the bottom up. The answer to a moral question in your theory cannot be equivalent to 'he must be unhappy deep down because otherwise the answer comes out wrong'.
It is true though. People that want others to be miserable are miserable themselves. If that has to be the basic assumption on which my theory is built, then so be it. It seems like a reasonable assumption to me, which I have seen confirmed plenty of times through experience.
No, it isn't a reasonable assumption because it yields a circular argument. It's also insufficient to just make stuff up to make an argument hold. Either do it properly or don't do it.
Will all caps help? WHETHER IT IS TRUE OR NOT (and it's not) YOU CAN'T DEFINE MORALITY IN TERMS OF PERSONAL HAPPINESS ON THE ONE HAND AND CONSTRAIN PERSONAL HAPPINESS TO BE CONSISTENT WITH MORALITY ON THE OTHER TO SUPPORT THAT DEFINITION. THAT IS NOT AN ARGUMENT.
And, while we're at it, this is YOUR theory you're presenting. You need to do better than present a circular argument followed by shifting the burden of proof onto others. Otherwise all philosophical debate would reduce to things like:
God doesn't exist. Prove me wrong.
Aha, but God does exist. Prove me wrong.
Except that he doesn't, so... Prove me wrong.
etc.
Is it possible that even you can see how this sort of thing is an idiotic waste of time? If you want to demonstrate that all immoral activity actually reduces personal happiness, that's your burden. You have to do the legwork. You can't assume it and then claim to derive it.
Sorry for the late reply. Been in a lot of interesting discussions recently and it's been a little hectic to manage them all around home life and responsibilities. I'm sure you understand.
I agree with your claim that there is no one magic formula for claiming full epistemic justification for truly claiming any act as truly moral with 100% certainty. In order for there to at least be some objective moral truth there needs to be at least one true claim about morality to ground it in. So ultimately we can only rely on certainty by degree. It becomes a question of reasonable or unreasonable certainty.
If there is no such thing as moral knowledge or meaning then Relativism is also the wrong. Relativism cannot set itself apart from other moral claims when it is itself a moral claim, that there are no moral absolutes or objective truths. Relativism is still a moral claim, so if it is true then there must be at least on moral claim which is true, itself. Yet it can't be because it's central claim is there are no moral absolutes. Do you see the contradiction there?
Contextual Relativism, might have relativism in the name but it's first claim is this; Moral Truth and meaning are relative to clearly delineated context. If we had full awareness of the context of the universe and it's compositional parts, as well as a brain and/or Mind (whichever you prefer, not the topic) that could handle all of that complex data. Then maybe we'd be able to act with complete and full certainty on all moralistic matters.
If there is no such thing as moral truth then that means there is no cultural truth, if that is true this negates all ideas of meaning in language. Which means we couldn't have certainty on anything. However, this would provide deep contextual meaning to the concept of Chaos. But if chaos can mean something? Why would everything else be meaningless? The word "Meaningless" ultimately means "Nothing" but how can "nothing" have a meaning when the meaning we take from "Nothing" when our only frame of reference for a concept of "nothing" is reasonable certainty that this must mean an absence of a "something".
Ultimately, if language is meaningful to nature through any of the compositional parts of the universe that we might term "alive" then we can reasonably be certain that the universe must have meaning.
Otherwise everything I have said is just the nonsensical grunts and ape noises we claim have no meaning in the languages of other living entities. Which would have to be impossible for you ti understand if there is no meaning to anything.
If we can be reasonably certain about one thing, it stands to reason that we can not only be reasonably certain about other things, but that we can be reasonably certain that there are other meaningful truths up to and including moral claims.
Back to contextual relativism; it's second claim is that Language is a tool. A tool by itself is neither good or bad. It can be used by either a good or bad actor. If language is a tool, all words are tools. Made to Negate Falsehoods, Affirm truths and delineate clearly between the two with theories of meaning and the nature of meaning.
All this really implies about moral truths, as truths about language, is that moral truths can be described as objective but emergent in the same way there used to be no stars until the compositional parts of the universe previously enabled stars. It's an assumption that even meaning has to be in the universe from the beginning in order for it to be an objective reality of the universal environment, the way stars used to not be but now are. The way life used to not be but now is.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
If the statistics are represented as axioms they can be used to theoretically develop abstract rules via rational discourse. This would allow for growth and progress. Furthermore, these abstract rules would be able to be applied in different situations; it would be impossible to have a referendum, and thus statistic, on every possible situation. So, in some ways one would have to conform; but in a situation that doesn't correlate to a specific statistic one would have to apply multiple consensus-defined axioms to come to the right act. If there was a single moral imperative based on the statistics this would be impossible.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
This is only partially true. Acting counter to what is believed to be good behavior would be wrong, but to argue that the consensus is wrong could be considered not immoral. For example: if the majority of humanity believes that stealing is usually a wrong behavior for most people some of the time, a descriptive claim, is run through the process I outline in the OP, it becomes the moral axiom that stealing is sometimes justified relative to humanity. This is because the morality I propose is defined as "what is considered by the majority of humans to be good or bad behavior for most people some of the time" One can make another descriptive claim, such as that stealing is a good behavior if you are trying to feed your starving children, that isn't by definition immoral as it is merely descriptive until it is run through the consensus finding process. Nor is it by definition incorrect; but if the initial statistic were that stealing is always a wrong behavior for most people some of the time it would result in the axiom that stealing is always wrong relative to humanity, and, thus, to propose a descriptive claim that would result in a contradictory axiom would indeed be immoral. But one could still argue that a certain moral belief is more or less rational given what axioms are currently defined by the consensus.
If the statistics are represented as statistics, even more so. I mean, you have mathematics at your disposal to do just that.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
Okay, so I guess what you're saying is that you can challenge majority opinion as long as you don't breach particular rules. So I could verbally challenge, say, UK deportation policy (which is popular with the racist majority in the UK) so long as I don't actually hide a Windrusher in my cubby hole.
Fair enough, although it's limiting, it seems to me. Say that the majority get fed up with protests after BLM and Antifa and decide that protesting is wrong, unpatriotic, etc. Doesn't seem unthinkable to me. We still have the right to verbalise our contrary opinion, but we would be immoral to take our placards to the streets. Debate should always be the first, second, third, fourth and fifth port of call, but the problem with majority opinion is that it is propagated the majority of the time, which is always a barrier to moral progress. Think Rosa Parks.
Quoting Aleph Numbers
I think this works better for "Would you like it if X were done to you or a loved one?" type questions. I think it gets harder when dealing with questions about the most vulnerable in society, who are generally minorities embedded in majorities who at best don't care about them and at worst don't like them. You can't get a meaningful majority opinion on questions like 'Should you be deported to your grandmother's country of birth if you commit a minor fellony' when most people live in the country their grandmother was born in.
Personally my faith in the majority is low. I am a democrat, but one thing that democracy constantly highlights is that majority opinion is pretty ugly, stupid, and backward. I do not find the average person to be a good role model.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I mean, Trump got elected, that's pretty much all that needs to be observed. Granted, Hillary sucked.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yeah, well, majority opinion can be swayed. George Floyd's death was tragic, but it catalyzed protest on an incredible scale. That being said the left is leaderless and disorganized, and when the leftist opinion surges up it is usually organic. Chomsky made the good point that the left has always voted against, not in favor of their favorite, morally pure politician; that kind of dogma is for the right.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Good point. One could just resize the sample, however.
Actually, I kept saying that there may exist a moral truth, but we haven't found it yet.
What would convince you that we have found a moral truth? How certain is it possible for you to be that we have found a moral truth?
The classic case of "I don't know anything about xxxx, but I sure know one when I see one."
Not sure of your meaning here
It's not a matter of feeling. I don't know if you answered my question.
What are you trying to achieve by asking me to keep on explaining myself?
Everything we can perceive or comprehend is a matter of feeling. But I understand what you mean. I don't know if I answered your question either.
Quoting god must be atheist
My goals;
Not to be bored, have a good conversation.
Learn more about you, which will help me learn how to better communicate with you.
The reason I ask about your feelings as well as your thoughts, both are data types, relevant data types. I can only conceive of your external environment, I cannot do the same for your internal one. Not without a neurology lab. Ultimately I am enquiring into you as a phenomenon, not just as a person.