Well, actually, it is. It's kinda why we are here. — Banno

You do not look like you are here to question assumptions. You just declare them assumptions when they are descriptions. All I ask is for you is to check if they are accurate and point what is wrong if they are not.
But you attack a strawman.

questioned??? with hot air?
This is not philosophy. This is pseudo philosophy.
I am the one putting my framework to the test...but you just tap dance without offering any challenges.

any acknowledgments or objections? Feedback including objective evidence is essential in a discussion

you didn't bother to answer any of my questions when you were the one who objected to my claims....and now you demand an answer to an irrelevant question?(irrelevant to how my system functions).
That is not polite at all....

You are posting an abstract that is irrelevant to a specific method I am describing. Whether we ought to follow the outcome of the system in question IS IRRELEVANT.
I am trying to evaluate the system itself...and you avoid this challenge.
My system doesn't use "what is" to arrive to what "ought to be". IT identifies a common characteristic shared by KNOWN acts with positive moral value and uses it as an objective standard in our future evaluation. The system arrives to the "oughts" through the principles without taking in to account "what is the case".
Why this is so difficult for you???

not better....more rational and I accept the rules of the game.

Interesting. If someone were to say that physicists don't need to pay attention to f=ma, that talking about Newton's ideas was just chronicling and not physics, would anyone here give them credence? — Banno

NO sir! The difference is that Newton's idea is still established KNOWLEDGE with technical applications while in philosophy you will find pseudo philosophy, metaphysics, deepities, unfalsifiable speculations side by side with great ideas like Objectivism, naturalism, Humanism,Set Theory, Symbolic Logic, Reduction of Mathematics to Axioms & Logic, Transfinite Mathematics, Game Theory, Modal Logic, Bayesian Epistemology, Consequentialism etc etc.
So a more proper example would be if physicists DID pay attention to alchemy or astrology....

the difference is that I have acknowledged the beating I suffered by that metal sign and I gave up my comforting beliefs.

But comprehending the is/ought distinction is. — Banno

This is a really cheap excuse sir. The goal of ethics is to define these oughts!
So you confuse subjective unfounded declarations with objective moral evaluations.
We need to agree on the principle and you avoid this conversation.
I think we are done here.

What I mean , do you see a "god" in my system?..And don't be confused, Moral pronouncements are NOT the same with moral evaluations based on Objective principles,at least this is what I am trying to challenge in this idea...by exposing to your eyes.

Again....chronicling is NOT philosophy. That is one of the ten problems in modern Philosophy identified by Bunge in his book "Philosophy in crisis".
Now can you offer a critic similar to Hume's but this time on the system of moral evaluation I described or this is where our conversation ends?

I agree with you - there's a lot of stuff that people present as philosophy but ain't. You provided a list in another thread on what pseudo-philosophy is and it was an eye-opener. — Agent Smith

This makes me really happy to hear. Most individuals in here stick to their guns even when facts hit them in the face with a big metal sign with bold letter spelling "facts".

I up-voted Wayfarer's post because truth be told, our knowledege on consciousness is full of holes and so long as that's the case, people are justified in challenging any position one assumes on the nature of the mind. — Agent Smith

Sure....but looking the holes will never allow ''you" to see what we know.
His actual statement was that:

But neuroscience itself is nowhere near to understanding this process on a practical level — Wayfarer

...when he can easily visit a neuroscience database and learn the roles of the Ascending Reticular Activating System and the Central Lateral Thalamus in establishing and introducing content in our conscious states!
Not knowing everything doesn't mean we know nothing....right?
Go to neurosciencenews.com and search the key phrase "how the brain does" and add any mind property you want...from memory, meaning to consciousness and pattern recognition.
The fact is that we known (science) far more things that philosophers want to admit.
I get it, consciousness and the mind in general is the last field of study that still justifies some paychecks to philosophers so its on their favor to ignore our epistemology.

maybe you are right and I can see cases where chronicling is not only helpful but also insightful.
But in this case we are all posting opinions on a thread labeled "Can morality be absolute?
and no one (except me) talks about Secular Morality and Situational ethics that is the back bone of the modern Judiciary system (which if far from being adequate). Instead most of you visit ideas that they are either tautologies or factually wrong (based on modern knowledge) or metaphysical at best.

:up: Thanks for letting us know. Philosophers have blind spots, like everyone else I suppose. — Agent Smith

And not only that.....the available epistemology during their time was not enough to assist them in their work.

You understand why up-voting his claim is an objectively wrong thing to do ...right?

Did you check the data base I sent you? You will keep denying facts?
Let me provide the definition of Pseudo philosophy.
"What is pseudo-philosophy?
Philosophy that relies on fallacious arguments to a conclusion,(premises that aren't verified)
and/or relies on factually false or undemonstrated premises. (scientifically ignorant)
And isn't corrected when discovered." (what you do by not correcting your factual wrong claims).

-"This is a philosophy forum, as such knowledge of neuroscience is not assumed or necessary,"
-By skipping epistemology and science, these two essential steps for any philosophical inquiry you render your claims pseudo philosophical by definition.
When a claim isn't based on knowledge or is in direct conflict with knowledge...it can never be wise!
Wisdom(wise claims) is the actual goal of Philosophy...its in the etymology of the term!
So lack of wisdom means lack of any philosophical value in your claims.!

You yourself are saying science(knowledge) is seperate from philosophy (wisdom).
Without philosophy means without love of wisdom...

Anything not guided by the love of wisdom is guided by something else, no?

Tell me how science can seperate itself from philosophy without being foolish?

Trying to understand nature without first understanding yourself (or in conjunction with) could be THE definition of unwise, on par with trying to gain the whole world but losing one's own soul.

"I was only doing my job!" — Yohan

-Interacting with you makes me tired and sad.

Chronicling is NOT Philosophy. Kant or any other great philosopher of the past didn't have access to the epistemology available to us today....so its mainly a waste of time to either criticize outdated philosophy or to try and understand what they really meant when you can use our current knowledge and arrive to informed and far superior philosophical conclusions.
That is not a rule of course....

No it isn't a logical error...ITS just irrelevant to the subject in question.
The mistake is to assume jumps.....when I describe the tools I use and you avoid challenging them.

That is because you assume that thought is reducible to neuroscience, which is precisely the meaning of 'neuroscientific reductionism — Wayfarer

-No I don't really have to assume anything.
I only observe the objective facts provide by our epistemology and I use the Null Hypothesis to identify the default position on this subject.
Our current epistemology demonstrates the Necessity and Sufficiency of brain mechanisms for the emergence of human mind states.
On the other hand I have zero facts indicating the existence of an alternative Necessary or Sufficient explanation. Do you have any?

There are many criticisms of neuroscientific reductionism which are too voluminous to try and give an account of here. — Wayfarer

-Criticisms based on metaphysical worldviews are useless in Epistemology. What they need to provide is objective independently reproducible evidence in favor of their alternative framework.

But I would argue that it's a mistake to ascribe semantic content to neurological data. Semantic content, which is the content of meaningful statements, is of a different order to the kinds of data the neuroscience deals with. Saying that neurobiological signals 'mean' something or 'transmit meaning' is projecting semantic value onto neurological signals — Wayfarer

-Your argument makes no sense from a scientific perspective. Meaning is a characteristic infused in our conscious states by an other property of mind known as Symbolic Language. it turns out that reasoning affections and emotions in to feeling and concepts has an evolutionary and survival advantage for organisms with brains. Not only its is a necessary ingredient of our conscious states,but we can accurately decode the semantic content of conscious thoughts by just read brain scans (Carnegie Mellon 2017)

But neuroscience itself is nowhere near to understanding this process on a practical level. — Wayfarer

-This is a common misconception based on personal incredulity and the result of a wishful thought . A quick search in a popular databased of Neuroscience can reveal to anyone that we know a great deal of things on how meaning arises in our brains and which mechanisms are responsible for this mental property.
https://neurosciencenews.com/?s=how+the+brain+meaning

AND this is the best chance to point out how Pseudo Philosophy "looks like".
When people make claims that are disconnected for science and our current epistemology ...those claims are doomed to be unwise, wrong and pseudo philosophical!

So neuroscientific reductionism is said to commit the 'mereological fallacy', that is, the ascription of what conscious agencies are able to do, to only one part of the organism, namely, the brain. — Wayfarer

-This is an other factually wrong statement about science.
Mental properties are emergent phenomena products of the function of a complex system, so by definition a reductive approach is useless to study the phenomenon. This is why Complexity Science is the right tool for emergent phenomena.
You are trying on purpose (or due to ignorance) to promote a strawman picture of science that has nothing to do with the actual methodology used in the field.

Besides, that is not the point of the emerging science of biosemiosis is the sense in which signs (and therefore meaning) are inherent in all living processes, even very simple ones like single-celled organisms. That is in turn connected with the view that rational sentient beings such as ourselves don't live in a world comprising physical objects, but a world comprising meanings - the meaning-world or 'umwelt' which is interpreted by us as (among other things) a physical domain. — Wayfarer

I guess my above remarks on your knowledge about neuroscience raise red flags anytime you attempt to criticize the science...

Forget that part...we are NOT THERE YET! Whether we MUST follow an objective moral judgments is irrelevant.
Pls Focus on my question and try to weight in your answers.

Is well being a common characteristic in every single act you are able to identify as moral?
If not can you point out which act doesn't share this characteristic while being moral?
If we accept well being as our auxiliary principle in our evaluations does that help us identify which act is objective moral or immoral.
Pls argue for the position you take.

Life is the emergence of meaning. — Wayfarer

Life is the emergence of specific biological process. Meaning is a quality that emerges in specific biological functions (brain functions). Organisms with brains seek meaning in their experiences.
You are committing Fallacy of composition. A property displayed by a specific part shouldn't be assume a general property of a system.

-"

So this contention that life was 'the outcome of atoms which had no precognition of the end they were achieving' is, shall we say, deeply questionable. — Wayfarer

-The Null hypothesis doesn't allow precognition to be assumed as part of our Default position for the emergence of life.

-"A morality that does not tell us what to do is not a morality."
-lol what are you talking about????
Morality is an abstract concept...it tell us nothing on its own.If you are looking for moral declarations that won't happen.
We need a system or a method based on a common shared characteristic by known moral judgments to inform us what actions would be moral in different situations...that how we can reach moral judgments.

Look again at this. See if you see a problem. You are not telling us what to do, but just how to "figure out what to do"... — Banno

Correct, I suggest a method that can help us produce objective moral evaluations based on a common characteristic of known moral judgments.

-"You still jump from is to ought."
-lol no I am not. I am just suggesting a method that can point to what we should do if we ALL accept the same principle of well being as a metric in our evaluations.
So my question is DO you accept the principle? if not can you explain the reasons why not?
Pls don't dodge my questions again!!!!!!
You skip my questions and you make empty accusations for "jumping from is to ought" when I am suggesting a falsifiable principle and a falsifiable method for you to expose by providing evidence.... but you keep avoiding challenging your rejections.

AH, so because you did not mention the word ought, you are not telling us what we ought to do. Your claim is that you are telling us only how things are.

If you are not telling us what we ought to do, you are not engaged in a moral discourse.

Hence, your posts are of no use in deciding what we should do.

Ethics is a lot more involved than just a bit of applied biology. — Banno

-I never told you what you ought to do. I am pointing out a common characteristic in all moral evaluations. Acts that are accepted as moral appear to promote the well being of our society and its individual members. If you disagree pls tell me why.

-"If you are not telling us what we ought to do, you are not engaged in a moral discourse."
-Of course I am not telling you what to do. I am only pointing out what principles appear to be able to produce objective moral judgments. By using those judgements we can objectively figure out what to we ought to do for our acts to be moral.

-"Hence, your posts are of no use in deciding what we should do."
-Maybe you need to revisit the Title of the thread and the content of the OP sir.
The subject of this thread is not a question on what what we should do, but it questions whether there is a way to arrive to objective (or absolute) moral judgments.

-"Ethics is a lot more involved than just a bit of applied biology."
-Ethics addresses the philosophical value and meaning of human behavior BY DEFINITION....so our philosophy analyzes the values we see in the spectrum of human behavior.
You keep claiming that well being is not a common characteristic of moral acts and that ethics is a lot more than the philosophical take on a specific natural phenomenon...but you avoid elaborating on those declarations.
(try pressing the reply or quote pop up window so that I can receive a notification).

Unlike yourself, I don't rule out the perspective provided by philosophical theology or religion generally, insofar as they provide a cosmic grounding for ethics. — Wayfarer

Such a perspective is Unnecessary and Insufficient plus we have zero epistemic foundations to make that assumption rendering it a pseudo philosophical speculation.

It remains that the choice of creed is yours. It remains that you cannot just dump your moral responsibility on to god, any more than Nickolasgaspar can dump it on the wellbeing of society. — Banno

I am not sure you understand the premises made by Secular Morality.
You view morality as being about " what one ought to do". So you assume that my point is "well being is what we ought to strive."
My answer is no. Again well being is only the principle we can use for objective judgments NOT what we ought to do. In Secular Morality we address the Descriptive NOT Normative aspect of the phenomenon.
We don't say what we "Ought to do", but we describe what type of acts we evaluate as moral and we identify their common denominator , which is wellbeing.
For a weird reason(not really), we seem to appreciate other people acts that do not undermine other people's well being!
So we understand that we humans identify moral behavior that which promotes the well being of members in a society. THis is NOT what we ought to do, this is what we find common in all acts that we accept as moral. (must I stress it some more?).

SO before we start making moral judgments we need to find a principle that can allow us to produce objective "oughts". This can be done by using as principle the common denominator we identified above.

SO my question is, do you think that we do have actions that undermine the well being of the members of a society and they are still considered to be moral? IF yes then we will have an exception in this rule. IF we find more similar acts then Secular Morality will be forced to get rid off this principle.

You and I ought be working together to show Nickolasgaspar that there is more to ethics than physics. Have you noticed his profile image? The Scientism is strong in this one. — Banno

First of all you seem to ignore the definition of scientism. I am the first to reject the basic premises of Scientistm (1.Science is the only source of knowledge and 2. Science can explain everything).
So lets put this strawman aside.
Secondly Physics has nothing to do with a byproduct of biology. Biology has....
Now pls work together and show me that ethics studies something more than the philosophical implications of a natural phenomenon....that of the meaning and value of human interactions.

Again, you have here claimed that the wellbeing of society is what we ought do.

Why? — Banno

You wont find an "ought" in my statements. I never claims what we "ought to do". I only pointed out that what we understand as a morality refers to the implications an act has on the wellbeing of other members in a society.

You havn't grounded your moral system, just assumed it. — Banno

-I described what we identify as morality. My system just uses this acknowledgment as a way to produce moral evaluations. Do you have a different opinion on what morality describes in our interactions? Do you believe that we accept acts as moral even if they do not promote the well being of others and our society as a whole?

Well, no, it doesn't. Morality is about what one ought to do. — Banno

Ok...what to do in relation to who/what and with what purpose.????
I stated that " morality refers to the evaluation of acts that affect other members of a society!"
and you responded "No"...while literally stating "Morality is about what we should do around others. "
So morality is indeed about how to act around other members and evaluate which acts are acceptable or not(what we should or shouldn't dot).
Now my argument is that what we "should or shouldn't do"(to use your wording) is defined by how those acts affect other members of our society..in short our well being in general.
Do you have a different opinion on how we define those "shoulds"?

Perhaps we ought abandon the notion of society and instead return to living as wild, individual beasts. Or perhaps for the good of the planet we ought eliminate humanity altogether. — Banno

- Sir......these "solutions'' are irrelevant to my points.
I am defining what aspects of our reality and social life are described by our moral evaluations and judgments. what on earth living as wild or individual beasts has to do with this conversation???????

You've skipped from an is to an ought, without providing a justification. That we are social animals does not imply that we ought to be. — Banno

I DID NOT!!!! I NEVER mentioned the word ought! Are you sure you are responding to the correct post????
I am pointing out what we mean by the term moral behavior. What humans value as a moral act and what those acts promote.
Why is this so difficult for you?????

-"This is basic ethical theory. Ought be obvious''
and it is irrelevant to my points.
Pls focus on my arguments. Pls tell me if Moral acts promote or are against the well being of the members of a society. IF not pls tell me what it means for an act to be moral.

btw we don't "ought" to behave in a specific way!(promote our well being).
We descent from individuals who for thousands of years survived through organizing themselves in functional societies. Those societies became functional due to specific qualities and characteristics displayed by the behavior of their members.

Rocks are neither good nor bad. Morality is about what we should do around others. Hence, your view is wrong. — Banno

-Ok I c you get which process enables the need of moral evaluations. So what exactly is you objection?
Maybe I misunderstood your argument.

The naturalistic fallacy again. — Banno

Its a Pragmatic Necessity, no a fallacy. There is a huge difference there.

-"Why ought we promote the wellbeing of society?"
- Societies that do well inevitably promote the well being of its individuals.

There are moral systems that say the opposite; that what is right is the sovereignty of the individual, even at the expense of the greater good of society. — Banno

I don't know what sovereignty has to do with the moral evaluation of behavior between human beings.
We are not addressing who has the power in a society or how it is structured and organized.
We are talking about what is morality and what it evaluates.


-"The point here is not to make a choice between these competing systems, but to realise that the good is not reducible to something else, it is neither the wellbeing of society not individual autonomy. "

Morality has to do with us evaluating our interactions and how our actions promote specific metrics that favor the well being in a society.
BY DEFINITION morality refers to the evaluation of acts that affect members in a society!
i.e. Most people identify stealing as an immoral act. Stealing by definition demands the act of taking things from other members of your society.
You will need an act to affect others in order to carry a moral value.
Eating a sandwich is a morally neutral act....eating other people's sandwiches without their consent is an immoral act.

So when our acts do not promote the well being of our society and the members in it, we must expect a kick back from them
i.e lets say I manage to expand my well being by stealing and tricking other people. My society will demand justice and take actions that will affect my well being.(put me in jail).
Can you see now how other members and your society as a whole are linked in this evaluation process?

But someone else might say, using the exact same metrics, " Ah, you just wait another 20 years, you'll find that society as a whole has benefitted from allowing/encouraging action X more than enough to make up for the temporary harm it did" — Isaac

- I am not here to promote my moral framework as flawless or absolutely true. I do appreciate your reasonable doubts and questions and I am far from sure that my morale framework includes all possible scenarios.
The fact is that in my conversations and my personal pondering on the topic I have never found an example where our objective evaluation can be suspended.
This is why I challenge my position by asking examples from you. Maybe you will be able to find an exception to the rule...and if I find some more then the rule stops being a rule after all.

Now let me address your reasonable scenario.
First of all lets assume that future societies do manage to find out that a currently "immoral" practice X does promote the well being of individual members and society's as a whole in the near or far future.
(like the example you gave with the sweets).
Such a "discovery" would be a problem for Absolute Morality, not Situational(objective) Morality....and let me explain.
The specific moral judgement that identified that practice "immoral" was the product of current available facts ,current limited knowledge, interpreted and evaluated by the principle of Well being.
So our conclusion was based on Objective Knowledge(shared and accessible by everyone) at our time.
New evidence forced a new objective evaluation that lead to a new conclusion. That doesn't mean that our judgement was not a product of an objective evaluation..right?
i.e. its like the geocentric vs the heliocentric model in science. Objective facts at that time forced people to accept geocentricism while future evidence pointed to a new objectively correct framework. Both models were and are based on Objective observations of their periods respectfully.

Now I can accept the possibility of your scenario but we need to agree that no immoral behavior against a specific population or members of a society can be justified as moral just because other larger populations (in future or contemporary) are benefited by it.
Slavery can be used as an example for this argument. Slavery was one of the main practices that enabled the accumulation of huge capitals thus allowed the transition of National economies from Mercantilistic to Capitalistic principles.
Even if we assumed that capitalism is a successful economical system, we can never justify the practice of slavery as moral.

So I am not sure that my metrics or the principles behind Secular Morality and Situationalism can be demonstrated wrong based on future evidence. The judgement always remains Objective!

since both aspects are not your a game...how would you know? lol

Yes, its easy for an ignorant individual to believe this statement.....

Well Pleasure doesn't equate to Happiness and Happiness is an essential metric for our well being.
The Denial of a Pleasurable moment or activity is not always a moral or immoral act. So a kid crying or becoming sad is not an absolute metric.
i.e. denying a kid to play with matches or a wall socket or near a busy street may frustrate it but it is totally moral and justified.
What makes the denial of a Pleasurable moment moral or immoral depends on the situation.
Did that kid had any other sweets that day/week etc? Did we promise it as a reward for something, are other kids allowed to have some but that kid is not? etc.
So denying a child sweets can easily be immoral based on the specific situation.

I can give you a point here on the idea of timescale...since "situation" includes facts in different points in time that we need to include in our our evaluations.

Now Inflicting Harm is also not an absolute metric for morality/immorality or against the well being in general.
i.e. If I kill a murderer right before he manages to kill my wife....I did harm a person but can we say I did an immoral act. No, because an act that is in favor of the well being of our society and its members is moral by definition.
You will point out that the murderer was also a member of this society and that is true. But he is also an agent that undermines the well being of every other member and we need to address and solve the problem.