We will just have to agree to disagree then :wink: .

For our discussion, I am just focusing on one: the implausibility of the sex being an external representation of the disassociation of a mind. Don't those seem unrelated? How would that make any sense?

If we think of it akin to personality disorder, which Kastrup does quite often, then we would expect trauma to cause a disassociation (i.e., an alter) or at least something significantly violent or powerful; but, because we know sex produces life, Kastrup must hold with consistency that sex somehow is the act that forces the Mind to disassociate from itself. Sex, simpliciter, is not violent; it is not traumatic; it is not particular powerful; etc. What I would expect if Kastrup were right, is that something powerful about the Mind's psychology would 'traumatize' it into splitting into multiple minds (alters). The problem is that Kastrup admits the analogy cannot be stretched this far (as I am doing) because the universal consciousness is a basic, primitive consciousness for Kastrup (so it doesn't have the psychology that a person with a personality disorder would have). However, it still produces a meaningful question: "why would we expect sex to produce alters of a universal Mind?".

Well, we could always ask: "could good historical epochs always have been better if there was more prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, as well as faith, hope, and love?"

I am not saying vices are virtues; but the vast majority of the major historical progressions were so rich, rapid, and monumental because of the sheer brutality involved. The ends justifying the means is always a faster and better route to achieve the end result, notwithstanding its immorality.

On the other hand cooperation, loyalty, trust, and love -- all good things -- were indispensable in the development of the scientific / industrial revolutions, growth of agriculture, trade, industry, and culture which brought about our prosperous present state. .

To me, cooperation, loyalty, trust, and love are all traits which are required for any ideology or project to take root and sprout....it seems like you are both trying to formulate a dichotomy between these traits and those required for brutal conquest when, in reality, they are the same. Some virtues are required for evil just as much as good (e.g., the courageousness of the Nazi).

To your point though, it is worth asking: "have there been any peaceful and ethical movements that progresses just as rapidly and richly as the many barbaric ones that came before (or after) it?". Very few; in fact, I would say the only ones are the ones that are barbaric anti-barbarism: the violence of peace. E.g., Ghandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., etc.

It seems to me that you could just as easily make the case that good things have overwhelmingly involved cooperation, loyalty, trust, and love. It's a selective history.

I don’t see how this contradicts what I said: the bloodiest and most gruesome of human events require all those traits you mentioned within the in-group.

At any rate, you might enjoy Dante. He takes a lot from Aristotle, but he also has a very developed philosophy of history and sees a major unifying role for empire. He has De Monarchia, which is an explicit apology for world-empire, but these ideas are also all over the Commedia.

Thanks: I will take a look.

Hegel would be another good example, and he has some ideas about balancing particularism (perhaps through federalism and strong local governance) and a strong state. However, given he is writing in the long shadow of the Thirty Years War, he cannot seem to find it in himself to discard the post-Westphalian state system, even though his thought would seem to suggest a world-state.

I have Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic, but I’ve never been able to penetrate into whatever the h*** the man was trying to convey with his obscure writings :worry: .

Interesting: so it sounds like you are a bit of an Aristotelian too. How would you define Justice? Do you see any solution to the A and B conceptions of Justice that I noted?

For reference, here they are:

(A) in terms of some account of what and how a given person is entitled to in virtue of what they have legitimately acquired and earned, or (B) in terms of some account of the equality of the claims of each person in respect of basic needs and of the means to meet such needs.

Yes, because, as any experienced attorney or judge will attest to: "justice" is not normative (re: micro bottom-up –> well-being (i.e. utilitarian)) as you seem to conceive of it, Bob; in a naturalistic moral framework¹, "justice" is applied (re: macro top-down –> nonzero sum conflict resolution (i.e. consequential)).

Wouldn't you agree, that justice has a normative and applied aspect? There is what is just ideally (which is normative ethics), and there is what can be applied in practical law (which is applied ethics)---no?

E.g., everyone should be going the speed limit but there's no way for the government to monitor that in the car (other than cops checking with their speed guns) without violating people's right to privacy.

Also, why would "macro top-down" justice require consequentialism?

Here's what I am thinking. Justice is about, fundamentally, respecting other members of the community (or social structure in which one is a member, such as a family for example) such that each member is getting what they rightly deserve and not getting what they do not deserve.

Let's revisit both A and B conceptions of Justice:

(A) in terms of some account of what and how a given person is entitled to in virtue of what they have legitimately acquired and earned, or (B) in terms of some account of the equality of the claims of each person in respect of basic needs and of the means to meet such needs.

A is missing the communal aspect of justice, namely that each person is owed resources, titles, roles, etc. not just in terms of their merit of activity but also relative to (1) the resources that the community can provide reasonably and (2) the nature of those members (viz., persons). A, then, is an incomplete libertarian-style conception of Justice that does not work per se. E.g., it could be that one person has legitimately acquired all the food but that it is unjust to let everyone else starve because that person would still nevertheless not be caring properly for their community (which they are still inter-dependent on): since, for Aristotle, a central element to Justice is respecting each person in society with the understanding that the good of the one is dependent on the good of the whole, it follows that the food hoarder would be being unjust (in this case) even though they have not violated A-Justice.

B is missing that the merit of actions is an aspect of justice, namely that each person is not equal simpliciter merely because they have certain inalienable rights (nor because they share a Telos): some people provide more value to the community's good and so deserve a bigger share of the goods for themselves. E.g., a person that takes on more responsibility and risk in the community which, in turn, furthers the community's good (proportionally to how much it furthers the person's good) deserves more goods (proportionally) to a person who chooses not to; and so if all the community does is reward people based off of their basic needs as a person, a human, etc. then there are bound to be people who are unjustly being given less than they deserve (proportionally) relative to the value they are bringing to the community itself. Thusly, a person can be B-Just while clearly being not only A-Unjust but also unjust (in the broader sense I described above).

So, beyond negating A and B conceptions of Justice, what exactly does each person deserve? I am don't think there is any exact moral principles that can be deployed, but, rather, taking the Aristotelian approach, Justice is fundamentally about the virtue of being just; and so I have to accept that it is impossible to come up with an exact equation that can solve the problems with A and B justice. Instead, all I can say is the general definition I gave above (which squarely holds justice as community-centric) and note that A and B styles of Justice don't quite capture it.

There are basic things that can be noted, of course: people have inalienable rights (in a deontological fashion), if the community has the resources to suffice the basic needs of each member than it should, each person beyond those basic needs (that can be reasonably fulfilled by the community) must be earned by way of merit, etc.

In terms of my example of the self-sufficient man, I think you are right: it would be a matter of beneficence and benevolence and not justice. One would have no duty nor obligation to help them in the forest, even if they could just snap their fingers to instantly heal them; but beneficence and benevolence are important virtues that are closely connected to justice (I would say) as doing good and being good willed are necessary in order to properly care for the community and the over-arching structures that the community is dependent on (like Nature). So it would follow that, ceteris paribus, the self-sufficient person who could snap their fingers to help the injured person would do so if they are virtuous because their goods are still indirectly dependent on the goods of the whole system of Nature functioning properly. If we were to say that this person somehow was radically self-sufficient to the extent that they could survive even if Nature died out, then they would not be being vicious by not helping.

Same thing, I think, with things like animal cruelty. Beyond the injustice which would arise from violating a person's property by torturing or killing their pet, it is not something, even outside the purview of justice, that a virtuous person would do because they need to be benevolent and beneficent.

Thoughts?

I've was lucky enough to be born in a culture which benefitted from a long history of colonialism, imperialism, and western supremacy. Had I been born in a culture which was the recipient of the hob-nailed boot, I'd look at things differently, I suppose. — BC

This is an astute observation that most people don't seem to acknowledge anymore. Nietzsche pointed this out, correctly, that all good things in human history have been the product of bloody and gruesome events. That's not to say we should keep doing it for because of that, but it is worth acknowledging.

Unfortunately, I don't see what part of my analysis is incorrect. Kastrup believes that a dissociated alter is akin to an alter in a person with a multi-personality disorder, and that each of us are external representations (i.e., images) of a dissociated alter of that one consciousness. It thusly follows that when a new consciousness is created, such as in childbirth, that this creation is an external representation of whatever processes produced the One to disassociate into another alter---no?

:up:

I will think about it and get back to you.

I've not read this thread

No worries at all: I don't expect you to read the entire thread (:

I read that comment you linked, but I am, unfortunately, not following. How am I conflating normative with applied ethics? Are you saying my thought experiment was invalid (on grounds of some sort of conflation)?

But how does that work? How is sex an external representation of a mind disassociating with itself?

Your response was good; and I need to think about it more and get back to you. There's two particularly challenging problems I haven't thought about much before. (1) The first being that justice can be viewed in two seemingly irreconcilable ways (and this reminded me of After Virue by MacIntyre, as he outlined in well in there): (A) in terms of some account of what and how a given person is entitled to in virtue of what they have legitimately acquired and earned, or (B) in terms of some account of the equality of the claims of each person in respect of basic needs and of the means to meet such needs. (2) The second being that moral naturalism doesn't seem to afford any notion of selfless justice whatsoever; instead, the only kind of naturalistic justice seems to be the need to socialize.

With respect to #1, it seems like your view of justice is squarely, although I don't want to put words in your mouth, A. Whereas, my attempted rebuttals invoke a sense of B; hence the disagreement. I am not so sure now if Justice is like A, B, or some sublated version I haven't thought of yet.

With respect to #2, if there is truly no way to naturally ground selfless justice, then I think you are right to point out that the only justice which one would participate in is the kind which is required by way of social goods; which would be essentially the relation between communal and individual goods. I am not so sure here either that naturalism can't afford an answer, but if it does I would reckon it would have to be grounded in the rational aspect of our nature (so Kant comes to mind here).

I am curious what @180 Proof has to say, although I am guessing it will be on consequentialistic lines of thought.

Let me outline a basic example so that we are all on the same page. Imagine you are completely self-sufficient living up in the mountains; viz., you are able to live off of the land, which is no one else's property, and need absolutely no social interactions between people to realize your own good (e.g., perhaps you are a bit anti-social). You come across an injured person in the woods, in need of desperate help. The question is twofold:

(C) Do you have any natural duty to help them?
(D) Would not helping them be an act of natural injustice?

As it stands now, I can think of no reason why one would have a natural duty to them at all; nor why it would be unjust. I feel like it is unjust, but I am starting to think that is the mere result of the Christian conscience in me from my forebearers.

I am aware of Kastrup's view, but his solution seems utterly implausible to me. According to his logic, people conceiving a baby is somehow an instance of the Universal Mind disassociating from itself thereby creating an alter.

I was curious what your take is on it, but, again, you don't have this problem (I don't think).

I would say epistemic idealism is any metaphysical theory which posits primacy to the mind insofar as how we understand reality; whereas ontological idealism is any metaphysical theory which posits primacy to the mind in reality (over matter).

Classical ontological idealism arguably started with good 'ole Berkeley and is still prominent in the literature today (such as with Kastrup). Although I am not as familiar with the lineage of epistemic idealism, I would imagine it starts with Kant.

Your view seems to be a form of transcendental idealism, which is about how we understand reality fundamentally through mental ideas (and cognitive pre-structures) and thusly is a form of epistemic idealism---not ontological idealism.

Re-reading your OP, I think this is supporting by your claims like:

These are the grounds on which I am appealing to the insights of philosophical idealism. But I am not arguing that it means that ‘the world is all in the mind’. It’s rather that, whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.

Although I think one could go the objective idealist's route and just say that all is in mind, but there is an objective reality because there is one universal mind maintaining the ideas of reality (e.g., God); your response to basic objections to idealism seems to be to go the transcendental idealist route; viz., to admit that there is a mind-independent world but that we can say nothing meaningful about it independently of the modes by which we cognize it.

A position, like Kant's, that admits of reality being fundamentally mind-independent (ontologically), is not a form of true idealism; that is, ontological idealism. Classically, by my understanding, 'idealism' is a short-hand for 'ontological idealism' which posits, like Berkeley, that reality is fundamentally mind-stuff: not physical-stuff.

Why is this important? Well, because I was going to ask you about the most difficult problem for idealism (IMHO)--the decomposition problem--but you don't seem to believe that reality is fundamentally mind-stuff; so that isn't a problem for you like it would be for a classical idealist.

The decomposition problem is how a universal mind, which is the fundamental entity ontologically, can "decompose" into separate, subjective, and personnal minds which we are. Sometimes it is denoted as how a Mind (with a capital 'M') 'decomposes' into a mind (with a lowercase 'm'). It seems like, for an idealist, the Mind which fundamentally exists for the world to be objective is toto genere different than the minds which inhabit it; and there's not clear explanation (that I have heard) of how a mind like ours would arise out of mental stuff happening in 'the Mind'.

I was going to ask you about your response to the decomposition problem, but, in re-reading the OP, it doesn't sound like your view is a form of ontological idealism....

Okay, but in your OP you talk about "forcible imposition" and "taking over North Korea," which look like warlike acts (i.e. imposing some value on a country by taking it over).

Correct; but war is the last resort. One of the central points of the OP was that it is a resort. I am merely elaborating that diplomacy and other tactics can be used; which would equally be banned if one is completely anti-imperialist.

I don't see a concrete argument here. Why does justice require it?

Justice’s essence is fairness; which is about judging merit and demerit impartially and objectively. To do so, requires that one judge merit and demerit based off of substances (viz., natures), relations (e.g., you are the father, you must take care of the baby), and decisions (e.g., you decided to spend all your money, now live with the consequences); for anything else, which would have to be the upshot of conative dispositions, is not impartial and objective. The just man, thusly, assigns merit and demerit, e.g., because this ‘thing’ is a person, a being that is alive, a being that has feelings, a being that is not alive, etc. and/or because this being decided to do this or that. The just man constructs a hierarchal structure of values based off of this sort of fairness, such that respecting persons is highest and non-living-things lowest (with everything in between).

One must help others, in general, ceteris paribus, because they are supposed to be just; and justice requires, as mentioned above, assigning merit and demerit impartially and objectively. Therefore, a just person should care, in general, about other people (and living things) in virtue that they are people (and are living things); because there nature sets them as worthy of protection.

The easiest way to demonstrate this is to think about the contrary: to believe that one shouldn’t help a person when they could at no or little cost to themselves, is to squarely value a non-person over persons; which misses, at best, the nature of a person vs. a non-person. E.g., the super rich man who spends a million dollars on a yacht, for no purpose other than to enjoy it, is valuing the satisfaction and enjoyment of a yacht over persons (which he could have helped with the money). Valuing a non-living-thing over a person is to improperly understand the nature of a person. The fact that they have a rational will marks them out as the most valuable; and the fact they are alive, can feel pain, etc. makes them more valuable than non-life (like a yacht).

"Suppose I see a source of mercury polluting the water supply. I should remove it, because as a member of the community I should value the health of the community and the cleanliness of its water. My good is bound up in the community's good, just as its good is bound up in my good."

Like I said before, this equally applies to all of life. Nature is one inter-connected body. We cannot survive and realize our good without the good of Nature herself. E.g., that’s why we hunt certain numbers of certain species to ensure the balance is stable. This equally applies to humanity as a whole, including itself in the whole of Nature. If I must care about mercury pollution in the water supply because my good is bound up with my community’s good (and vice-versa); then I should care about it because my good is bound up with Nature’s good (and vice-versa).

The reason I didn’t make this argument above is because it isn’t the ultimate reason why I think a rational agent is committed to the “moral project” of “the good of life”: like I stated above, it is the consequence of understanding properly how to analyze, impartially and objectively, the substances, relations, and decisions which exist in reality. I cannot be just and value a non-living-thing over a living-thing, all else being equal: that is to disrespect the nature of a living-thing in contrast to a non-living-thing. A living thing has a will (to some extent, albeit not necessarily proper), desires, emotions, can feel pain, etc.

Why don't you require that we have a responsibility to take care of other nations?

Because by this you are envisioning, I would say, a nation babysitting another nation; which is not what I am talking about. On the contrary, a nation does have a responsibility to take care of another nation if it does not pose a substantial risk to their duties to their own people; and that is why we do not go around advocating that nations, which have their own issues and are not in a position to help other nations, to take care of other nations. If a nation was super-abundant and rich and could give their excesses to helping an extremely poor nation—and at no risk of nuclear war or something like—in principle—I would say they have a duty to do so. But that duty does not supercede their more local duties.

This is no different than how, e.g., a father has a duty to take care of his kids and to care about water pollution for his community, but if the two conflict then he must uphold the former over the latter. Since father’s do not tend to have a super-abundance of resources and time, we do not generally advocate that fathers should spend an enormous amount of time solving water pollution: they don’t have the time or resources. They fit into society with certain more immediate roles that they must focus on.

There’s a hierarchy to duties.

Under your view, is it not a just war to invade Nazi Germany? Is it not an obligation other nations would have because they have no duty to victims of another nation? — Bob Ross

You are mixing together the notions of obligatory and permissible. What by natural virtue is supererogatory is neither impermissible nor obligatory.

That’s fair: I guess I would agree with that; as, by my own logic, a nation is not obligated to go to war with another nation to stop them from doing something egregious if it poses a significant risk to the integrity of their own prosperity. However, I can reword this to get at the main point: would you say that it is not obligatory for a nation who could stop Nazi Germany without any risk to their own prosperity, if that were possible, to do so? I think it would be, in principle.

Well the point is that a para-community does not possess obligations. The U.S. is so large, diverse, and diffuse, that what is at stake is more like an alliance than the natural obligations of a community.

So, to be clear, you are saying that I do not actually have a duty to care about water pollution in a state of the US which I do not live because the US is not a proper community?

This is a slippery slope. I can make the same argument for my local county vs. my state. They are just as much a “para-community”; and that was my original point.

The first problem is the idea that I have a duty to be virtuous. To whom is this duty owed? Strictly speaking, one does not owe oneself anything, because they are but one agent, not two.

Duties arise out of roles one has; and one has roles for themselves—no? E.g., one of my roles to myself is that I need to just with myself—no?

I don’t see why duty arises out of roles one has to others.

The second problem is the idea that justice requires us to fulfill the things you want us to fulfill. How does it do that?

What do you mean? Justice just requires us to be fair.

For Aristotle your dog does not have knowledge, and it therefore does not have volition.

I disagree with Aristotle on that point then. Evolution makes no leaps.

A human is bound by reason to care for its young, unlike a lion.

I am asking: what if a woman takes care of her young merely in virtue of an unbearable, primal, and motherly urge to do it? Arguably, a lot of mothers out there operate (at least sometimes) on primal motherly urges and are not committing themselves to their motherly duties because they rationally deliberated about it. In that case, then, your view seems to dictate that the woman would not be being dutiful because it is not being done through reason.

They do not engage in knowledge, volition, choices, etc.

I agree that they don’t engage in volition in accordance with reason; but there’s also volition in accordance with conative dispositions. I can will as an upshot of my passions, or my reasons for doing so. Animals have volition in the lesser sense; and knowledge in the sense that they also formulate beliefs about their environment (to some degree). Have you seen how smart some birds are? Belgian Malinois are way too smart to believe that they have no knowledge; unless by knowledge you mean something oddly specific.

I don't take Aristotle to be a moral relativist

I thought moral relativism meant something else: nevermind.

That's what people say, of course. But somehow no one ever provides good reasons, right? :razz:

That’s not true: there are many people on this forum that have changed my mind about things. In fact, I used to advocate for moral anti-realism on here: just look at my past discussion boards I created.

Why is it that no matter what the moral system or moral facts people are convinced of at any given time, the killing continues. Could it be that morality is chimerical?

That’s a very complex, socio-pyschological question. I am not sure how deep we want to get into it. The first problem is that there are wildly different understandings of the moral facts out there; the second is that people tend to behave like a herd—they are not governed properly by reason. Most people just end up being regurgitations of their societies values unless they are the ones being persecuted.

Well yes, as I say he has decided, not without precedent, that wellbeing should be the foundation of morality because harm to wellbeing appears to be a good indicator of what is bad.

Just as a side note, the problem with Harris—and why he is a laughing stock in the philosophy community—is not that he thinks well-being is the chief good: it’s that he doesn’t give any actual arguments for why that is the case in the Moral Landscape. The parts where there is a semblance of an argument, are so poorly written. He gives no metaethical account of why goodness is objective, nor how well-being is objectively good. He just pulls it out of his butt.

The other problem is that he thinks ethics can be done purely through science; which makes as much sense as doing epistemology purely through science…

How would we demonstrate when this happens?

We do it all the time; some people more than others. Heck, just do it yourself real quick: decide to do exactly the opposite of what you want to do. Viola!

The most extreme example I can think of is David Goggins, if you’ve ever heard of him.

I take this to mean that there are essential characteristics of what it is to be human.

Ok, sure. There’s an essence to being a human; but it can evolve over time. I don’t think my view requires humans to be ever-unchanging to work.

I forget, are you borrowing from Aristotle's notion of teleology here? The purpose/functioning of a thing?

Yes.

I'm not sure I understand this argument very well. Might be me or the wording used. If you can keep it simpler and briefer it might assist.

Viz., under a view that says the only goods are hypothetical to one’s goals (e.g., if one wants to be healthy, then they shouldn’t smoke) there are no expressions of good which are non-hypothetical (e.g., “one shouldn’t smoke”); but the problem is that “Lebron is a good basketball player”, “Bob is a good farmer”, etc. are non-hypothetical expressions of goodness. It is on the person that takes this kind of view to explain how those kinds of expressions are reducible to hypotheticals.

If basketball is about skill and winning, then Lebron is a good basketball player (I don't know who this is but I can make inferences)?

Basketball is about winning in accordance with the rules of basketball: saying “if” here would just be an expression of one’s uncertainty about it. For example, imagine I told you “if math is about doing operations on numbers in such and such ways, then 2 + 2 = 4”: does that make all mathematical propositions hypothetical? I don’t think so. “2 + 2 = 4” is a valid, categorical statement; and me saying “if math <…>” is just an expression of my uncertainty about what math is; and even if it weren’t, “2 + 2 = 4” is a valid categorical statement.

You believe human life can be assessed similarly and has a telos? We can agree as to what constitutes good - based on teleological grounds, which you believe are objective?

Essentially, yes. I outlined it before in a previous post. Teleology provides objective, internal goods (to itself).

I think history may have demonstrated that moral facts don't exist and societies can turn to killing people indiscriminately fairly quickly.

Let’s parse this argument. You are saying:

P1: If moral facts exist then societies could not turn to killing people indiscriminately.
P2: Societies have turned to killing people indiscriminately.
C: Therefore, moral facts do not exist.

This is obviously a non-sequiture. This is like saying:

P1: If mathematical facts exist then societies could not turn to killing people indiscriminately.
P2: Societies have turned to killing people indiscriminately.
C: Therefore, mathematical facts do not exist.

The issue is the same for both: there mere existence of a fact does not entail that humans will immediately believe it is true. In fact, this would be odd to say; e.g., like a mathematical fact wasn’t a fact all along because we just demonstrated the proper proof for it (after lots of disputes), or like a mathematical fact should be believed to be true even though one doesn’t have good reasons to believe it (given they are not given the hindsight, like we are, that it is a fact).

This is how Sam Harris seems to arrive at wellbeing as a moral foundation.

:yikes: . Sam Harris just blanketly asserts that wellbeing is objectively good: his approach to metaethics is to avoid it…..

What we can see here, is that we have a form of moral objectivism which is a form of moral relativism; whereof each objective good is relativistic to some teleological structure such that what is good is fundamentally about what best suits and sizes up to the teleology of it. — Bob Ross

Agree. And I have already alluded to this approach myself that we can set a goal and reach this objectively, but the goal itself is subjective.

What you are describing here and with Harris’ “approach”, which is really a form of moral anti-realism, is that subject’s set out for themselves, cognitively or conatively, ends for themselves which are subjective (or non-objective to be exact); and somehow because of this there are no objective goods—just hypothetical goods. Viz., a hypothetical good for basketball would be, under this view, something like “if you want to be good at basketball, then you need to practice it” or “if we want to have fun, then let’s invent a game called basketball”; but, importantly, the examples I gave are NOT convertible to hypotheticals. “Lebron is a good basketball player” is not convertible to a hypothetical: it is a categorical statement which is normative, because it speaks of goodness which is about what ought to be. E.g., the good farmer is not hypothetically good at farming.

As you suggest this is a contested idea and I have no way of determining whether you are correct about this.

One must determine its truth based off of the reasons for accepting it. My argument was based off of the colloquial way we talk and behave about biology: we behave as if it is teleological. Are you suggesting, e.g., that when someone says “My eye is malfunctioning” that they are really saying something like “My eye is not working like I wish it would”?

I see no good reasons to endorse essentialist accounts of human behavior,

What do you mean by “essentialism”?

I believe our use of reason is directed and shaped by affective responses, with reason often serving as a post hoc justification for emotional responses. I tend to hold that reason follows emotion, so what is often described as a 'rational nature' is better understood as rationalization rather than an innate rationality.

Many times that is the case, but don’t you agree that it is possible for a human to completely go against their nature qua animal in accordance with only reasons they have for it? This would negate your point, because it admits of human’s having a nature such that they have rational capacities irregardless if they use them properly.

I don't think it is worth us taking any more time on this (for now) since we do not share enough presuppositions to continue and we are bound to stick to our guns no matter what the other person says.

Whether or not to conclude our discussion, I will leave up to you my friend. However, neither of us are bound to “stick to our guns no matter what the other person says”. I am more than willing to change my mind if someone gives me good reasons to.

What is 'moral might'? I don't recognize any such conception.

Do they?

Yes, as I noted in my post. I did not follow how anything you said was relevant to it.

You appear to be an absolutist.

What do you think an ‘moral absolutist’ is?

I have consistently argued that morality functions pragmatically and aims to provide a safe, predictable community that minimizes suffering

It didn’t in Nazi Germany; and if it weren’t for the Allies winning, then most of the world would be just like it.

History doesn’t corroborate your position: rather, it tends to function as a tendency towards flourishing for an in-group. There have been tons of societies that do not generally care about the suffering of other people outside of their own group.

The fact that you keep arguing that I might just as well advocate anti-social or violent behaviour is absurd.

I am not saying that you like people being violent: I am saying that your view entails that people who are violent aren’t wrong for doing that; and that societies have not historically had a general disposition towards the well-being of humans...not even close. Heck, there was a huge span of history where entire classes of peoples were slaves…..

Your argument is similar to those religious apologists who maintain that if there wasn't a god there would be no morality and people would steal and lie and murder all over because only god can guarantee morality. Looks like you have just substituted god for the abstraction, truth.

What I am saying is that if there is no moral truth, then anything could be permissible relative to any given person’s subjective dispositions.

Now, with respect to this:

and people would steal and lie and murder all over because only god can guarantee morality [what is factually wrong is really wrong].

Not quite. I don’t think that people historically become immediately radically different if they disbelieve in moral realism; in fact, they tend to re-create basic moral realist intuitions into an attempted moral anti-realist substitute.

However, the reason these people don’t dramatically change, is because humans tend to be sheep. They are so influenced by their environment that their conscience ends up a reflection of their society’s conscience. That’s, IMHO, why they don’t start pillaging when they don’t believe, e.g., that it is actually wrong to pillage; because they don’t like the idea of pillaging (or what not) because they have the conscience of the historical context in which they are. Only few people in society think truly for themselves, to the point that they are willing to stand up straight—not straightened.

Can we explore an example of a moral truth?

We absolutely can. Let’s just take your example, since you mentioned it:

What objective truth underpins the notion that stealing is wrong?

For all intents and purposes hereon, I will refer to stealing as the purposeful and unlawful possession of another person’s (private) property. There are other definitions, and feel free to bring them up if you find them relevant, but I think this one will suffice.

Objective goods arise out of the teleological structures to which they refer; that is, they are goods which are objective because they are goods for and of the given teleological structure which are not good relative to anything stance-dependent.

The basic example I like to give is basketball. Is Lebron a good basketball player? Most people would say yes (and even if you don’t agree, just grant it for my point here). Here’s the interesting question though: is Lebron a good basketball player because one wants it to be the case that he is? No. Even if one yearns, desires, wishes, etc. for Lebron to be the worst basketball player in the world, that does not make it so; nor does it negate the fact that if he is placed on a court he will dominate. Is Lebron a good basketball player because one’s mere belief that he is makes it so? No. Even if one believes that Lebron is a terrible basketball player, that does not make it so; nor does it negate that he will dominate on the court. Is Lebron a good basketball player because we all agree he is? No. Everyone in the world could decide right now that Lebron sucks at basketball and it would still be true that he will dominate the court. The fact that Lebron is good at basketball is true stance-independently—thusly objectively. The goodness then, which Lebron exhibits, as it relates to basketball, is objective.

Now, someone might bring up the glaringly obvious fact that we invented basketball; but this doesn’t negate the above point. We could re-define basketball—viz., change all its rules—specifically so that it is true that Lebron sucks at basketball (now); but what the game—the teleological structure—which was historically called “basketball” is something Lebron is actually good at—viz., objectively good at.

What we can see here, is that we have a form of moral objectivism which is a form of moral relativism; whereof each objective good is relativistic to some teleological structure such that what is good is fundamentally about what best suits and sizes up to the teleology of it.

So, likewise, we could easily apply this to anything with a teleological structure. What’s a good clock? Presumably, among other things (perhaps), one that can tell the time appropriately. What’s a good chair? Presumably, among other things (perhaps), one that a person can rest on by sitting on it. What’s a good human? One that is properly behaving in accordance with what a human is designed to do. What is a human designed to do? Biology and philosophy (about our nature) tells us that.

We see here that this view inherently admits of evolutionary teleology, which is a hot take these days, so let me speak a few words on that real quick. The idea that biology supplies us with teleology has lost all credence nowadays, but it is easily recoverable by understanding that we behave as if it does provide a telos. For example, when one goes into the doctor’s office and says “my hand is acting poorly: it won’t move properly”; this analogous to the “good basketball player” example. One is not conveying, in normal speech, that their hand is behaving poorly only because they wish it worked differently. They are not expressing that it is behaving poorly—that it is being a bad hand—merely because their own belief that it is makes it so. No, no, no. They are saying that (1) there is a way that a human hand is supposed to work (viz., there is a teleology of a human hand) and (2) their hand is not sizing up properly to it. This becomes a much bigger problem for moral anti-realists that is often admitted (in my experience); because they have to claim, in order to be consistent, that when we go to the doctor complaining about our bodies not working properly (viz., not working in a healthy manner) that we are speaking purely about non-normative facts; which entails that, e.g., “my hand isn’t working properly like a hand should” is truly incorrect, colloquial shorthand for ~”my hand isn’t working like I would like it to [or like we all agree it should] [or like I believe it should][or <insert-non-objective-disposition-here>]”.

Back to the good human. In order to understand what a good human is, we must understand (1) the nature, teleologically, of a human and (2) how a human can behave so as to align themselves with it. There is a ton I could say here but to be brief, human’s have rational capacities with a sufficiently free will (that can will in strict accordance to reason—to cognition—over conative dispositions); and this marks them out, traditionally, as persons. A person—viz., a being which has a rational nature—must size up properly to what a rational nature is designed to do. Some of which are the intellectual virtues like the pursuit of truth, pursuit of knowledge, being open-minded, being intellectual curious, being impartial, being objective, etc. The one important right now, for your question about stealing, is Justice.

A good man is, ceteris paribus, a just man. Why? Because a good man properly utilizes his natural, rational faculties; and those rational faculties are designed to be impartial and objective; and, as such, are designed to bestow demerit and merit where it is deserved (objectively)—not where it is wanted. This is the essence of fairness.

As a just man, one cannot disprespect the proper merit that is innate to other persons; for they are just like him: they have a proper will which is rational. Therefore, in order to properly and impartially respect a person, he must respect—all else being equal—their will just as much as his own; and he cannot validly place his own will, all else being equal, above theirs without it being a matter of bias.

Now we can answer your question: why is stealing wrong (objectively)? Because stealing is effectively the act of cheating a person out of what they deserve in order to acquire someone one doesn’t deserve because they want it. This is to totally and utterly disrespect the other person qua person and to place one’s desires above the impartial facts.

In this view, it is worth noticing that stealing is not wrong because of some Divine Law or Platonic Form but, rather, because a person is a person and as such has a rational nature which they must adhere to in order to be a good person; given that the objective goods to persons are relative to the teleology of being a person. This is why nosce te ipsum is so important: one cannot escape what they are. If they want to be good, then they have to be a good at what they are—not what they want to be.

I am sorry Mww, I still have no clue why you believe that the will is good :sad:

It seems like you are taking the position that nothing is objectively good.

The moral facts. I don't know what you are looking for here. I certainly am not going to try to enumerate all the moral facts to you. The point was that "might entails right" is false because the moral facts dictate what is right.

I think you're really talking about an act of war, and I don't think just war theory would permit initiating a war or a war-like act simply for the sake of preventing some country from engaging in immorality.

I am not just speaking about war, but also diplomacy.

Some immoralities may justify wars, but certainly not all.

I agree.

I think we have a Christian duty to help humans qua human, but not a natural duty
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For example, what is your rationale? What does it mean that we have a duty "for the sake of the entire moral project?"
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Presumably you would say we also have a duty to rational aliens on other planets, if they exist?
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Do you offer any reason for why we are responsible to people on the other side of the world?

I think we have a duty to help humans qua Justice. Our rational capacities mark us out, teleologically, as requiring of ourselves, among many other things, to be impartial, objective, and to bestow demerit and merit where it is deserved (objectively). Under my view, a human has a duty to be Just merely in virtue of being a person; and basic human rights are grounded in one’s nature as a person, and so, yes, a rational alien species would have those same basic rights.

By the entire moral project, I mean the human good which, as humans, we must embark on; or, more abstractly, the “person good”, as persons, which we must embark on. Human good includes Justice because we are persons.

I am not arguing that we have a responsibility to take care of other nations; but we do have a responsibility to stop immoralities when they are grave enough. Under your view, I am not following why one would be obligated to even do this; as it is not their community. Under your view, is it not a just war to invade Nazi Germany? Is it not an obligation other nations would have because they have no duty to victims of another nation?

For wealth, but usually not for necessity. But a nation would generally be seen as a kind of para-community.

Well, that’s my point: the whole of humanity is a para-community no differently. So if a person must be concerned about the pollution in their nation, then they should be concerned about it every else on planet earth.

Kant is attempting to rationalize Christian morality, and I don't think he succeeds

I don’t think he did either; because all he really noted is that reason requires universalizability of its maxims, and this doesn’t entail any objective moral truths whatsoever.

I also find his categorical vs hypothetical imperatives kind of suspect.

Humans are pretty much always dependent, but if there were a non-social species then yes, it would not have communal obligations. One does not have communal obligations if one does not belong to a community.

But they would still have moral obligations—no? One such obligation would be to use their excess of resources to help other persons (and then other non-person animals). No?

Supposing I have duties to random strangers on the other side of the world, in virtue of what teleological reality do I have those duties?

Ultimately, your teleology as a human. You are a rational animal, which is a person. Persons must pursue truth, knowledge, honesty, open-mindness, justice, impartiality, objectivity, etc. in order to fulfill their rational telos.

He says, "a voluntary act is one which is originated by the doer with knowledge of the particular circumstances of the act" (Nicomachean Ethics, III.i).

Yes, but I don’t think the lion is ignorant just because it lacks the sufficient ability to will in accordance with reason. My dog, e.g., wills in accordance with its own knowledge and conative dispositions all the time.

A lion is bound by nature to care for its young, but not by reason.

So is a human bound by nature to care for its young, does that mean that a woman who takes care of her babies is not dutiful to her maternal duties?

Or, perhaps, do you mean by “bound by nature” that it wills it not in accordance with its own will, but some other biological underpinning?

But you are trying to say that chess duties are not moral duties. I would say that if one breaks their promise to play chess then they are acting immorally, which can be done by cheating. I don't recognize non-moral duties.

If the duty is not (indirectly or directly) related to our Telos as a mind; then it is an amoral duty. To your point, since we are analyzing everything relative to our Telos, everything truly morally relevant.

If I take your argument seriously, then it sounds like all forms of moral relativism must express merely hypothetical imperatives. — Bob Ross

Sure, that sounds right to me.

Let’s take the most famous example of moral relativism that is a form of moral realism: Aristotelian Ethics. Do you believe that there are no categorical imperatives in Aristotle’s view? Perhaps not, as Kant’s idea of a hypothetical vs. categorical imperative is a bit shaky and useless, but there certainly are objective moral truths in it.

E.g., I would consider “I should live a virtuous life” to be a categorical imperative that is derivable from Aristotelian Ethics even though it is true relative to the Telos of living creatures.

The nation is only justified relative to the moral facts: not their own inter-subjective dispositions.

Why should anyone care even if there are moral facts?

Because it enables us to enact what is actually good; and anyone who doesn’t want to enact what is good must be either evil, ignorant, or a lunatic. Don’t you agree?

Religious believers still commit crimes/sins even while they believe god is watching and will judge them.

Moral realists can still do bad things, but this is either because they themselves choose to disobey what is wrong or the moral facts they believe are not entirely factual. My main point is that, in this case, at least I can admit that those kind of people are wrong (e.g., Hitler); whereas you can’t.

In the absence of moral facts morality shifts from being about discovering "truths" to constructing frameworks that work for individuals and communities

No it doesn’t. That is a moral judgment you are making here—viz., that society should construct itself to work for its communities—but there is absolutely no fact-of-the-matter that dictates that either. Morality, under your view, becomes people trying to impose their own subjective dispositions on those that are weaker than them—that’s it.

A person that comes around and says, e.g., that morality should be, under moral anti-realism, about allowing the ruling elite to do as they please (and for the servants and slave classes to obey) is equally as right as you are; and equally wrong.

What magic do you suppose a 'moral fact' has to compel anyone to do anything?

We shape society on rationality, which requires of itself factual interpretations of situations; and of which is relative to objective, impartial reasons for or against. Our entire legal system is predicated off of this….

What you are saying is that people should start being biased and subjective about their reasons for or against how society behaves….

It sounds to me like you want to identify moral facts so you can dismiss any ethical positions you disagree with by appealing to 'truth' as the ultimate criterion

Truth is the ultimate criterion. Let me ask you this: if I were forcing vanilla ice cream down a child’s throat screaming at them that “I don’t care what you say, you should like vanilla ice cream!!!”; wouldn't you stop me because it is true that I should not be forcing my own subjective dispositions on another person (let alone a child)?

I'm curious - do you also wish to criminalize behaviors that don’t align with your truth criteria? What’s your end goal here?

Now you’ve shifted the conversation from truth being the ultimate criterion to what criteria of truth one holds, which is different. I don’t expect everyone to have the exact same theory of truth as I have, but I do expect them to intuitionally have something similar. Most people agree and understand, e.g., that truth is objective and absolute—and even if they don’t they behave as if it is—and that we should not impose our own feelings on other people: that would be irrational.

We support behaviors which support such human dispositions.

So, then, if we by-at-large hate the jews; then we would be correct to extinguish them under your view. It’s the same glaring issue over and over again.

Thanks for this discussion, by the way. I've found it useful.

You too, my friend!

There is no agreement on how morality works right now and yet we have morality and it mostly works. Cultures argue about morality all the time and have ongoing conversations about what they beleive and how to live better. So morality already functions the way I am suggesting.

The key here is that you are not merely noting that there is moral disagreement: you are noting that there is no disagreement whatsoever about facts. This is not, by any moral realist’s lights, what is going on in society. The mere fact of moral disagreement doesn’t suggest itself that there are no moral facts; and, on the contrary, I would say that it suggests that people behave as if there are. Imagine you didn’t believe that it was actually wrong to, e.g., torture babies for fun—in all probability, you wouldn’t try to stop anyone who likes torturing babies for fun, nor would you try to codify its prohibition into law. In practice, what you are claiming would like more akin to two people arguing about their favorite flavor of ice cream: we may have an interesting discussion—we may even make progress towards bettering our own subjective tastes on it—but at the end of the day we wouldn’t say either or us are wrong nor that we should impose our tastes on each other. Most importantly: this is NOT how people behave about ethics.

Western societies usually seem to set wellbeing or flourishing as a goal. What is best for people and culture. But there will never be agreement on how to get there or indeed what precisely flourishing entails. But it's close enough.

According to you, again, well-being isn’t actually good: it’s just, at best, what everyone mostly wants to be the case. So, why should anyone who disagrees care? Is Hitler wrong, then? Under your view, he has no reason, other than his own subjective dispositions, to change his mind.

No, it's more than a mere like/dislike. Just because there are no moral truths, doesn't mean there's no reasoning involved.

Ultimately, it is; because it is not grounded in truth. E.g., I can refine my cooking to better accommodate my tastes, but there is absolutely nothing factual going on here at its core. There are facts about what I like, but what I like is dictating what I am doing—not some fact out there (ultimately).

My current belief is that there are no moral facts but I believe morality is useful pragmatically - people (mostly) feel empathy for others and they generally want a predictable, safe society. They want to be able to raise families, pursue interests, have relationships and achieve goals. They want codes of conduct that allow for this. That's what morality is

Yes, but, again, if a society were to emerge which didn’t care about those things—or even had anti-thetical values (like mass genocide, torturing, etc.)—then they wouldn’t be wrong according to you.

For me, people tend towards, assuming their environment isn’t heavily influencing them to the contrary, what is actually good because they tend to be healthy members of the human species; and healthy members of the human species have rational capacities that require of them to be impartial and just.

Like traffic lights. There's nothing inherently true about road rules but they provide us with systems of safety and allow for the possibility of effective road use

Well, there’s plenty of things that are factual about laws; but, to your point, they are grounded in something else—what is it, then? Morality as it relates to Justice: the polis. Having no vehicle laws, for me, is ultimately about allowing people to drive around safely because that is a part of a better society (objectively).

Those don’t work for what’s going on here. Ontology, insofar as for that Nature is causality, and the human subject is the intelligence that knows only what Nature provides.

For what’s going on here, the subject himself is the causality, and of those of which he is the cause it isn’t that he knows of them, but rather that he reasons to them. It makes no sense to say he knows, of that which fully and immediately belongs to him alone.

I would say it is a conflation between ontology and epistemology but I realized this is just begging the question in our case; because you deny this distinction exactly due to the fact that you don’t think there is anything about how reality is that can dictate out it ought to be. Of course, the moral anti-realist has to note that the ontology of morality is really just grounded in the projections of subjects; and this is exactly what I understand you to be saying by noting that the wills of subjects are introduce new chains of causality into the world and are not themselves causal.

I don’t disagree that willing is inherently negativity (as hegel would put it) and, as such, does not itself originate out of causality; but this still doesn’t answer my question.

You have to provide some argument for why the will is good, and not merely the introducer of new chains of causality. So far, this is what I see you as arguing:

P1: A thing which produces new chains of causality and of which is not causal itself is good.
P2: Willing produces new chains of causality and is not causal itself.
C: Willing is good.

Again, in P1, why is it good? What grounds as good?

The word "reprimand" does not appear at all in the passages you quote, which hinders your argument for equivocation.

I see what you are saying, but if Aquinas is just noting that no man can punish another who is not in their jurisdiction (to do so) but that they can restrain or stop a person from doing wrong; then this does not, per se, negate my point since invading a nation like North Korea is done primarily for stopping them—not punishing them.

What do you think it would mean to restrict duty to that which relates to law?
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For the ancients the largest community would have been the polis, the city-state

I thought you were saying, by way of Aquinas, that a nation cannot invade another nation to stop them from doing immoral things to their own people because that nation has no jurisdiction over the other one (and thusly no duty to do it). That’s inherently about the legal system: the jurisdiction that they don’t have is purely legal—no?

Likewise, the polis is about legal jurisdiction: it is the city-state.

Are you thinking of positive law or something?

I don’t know what positive law is.

How do you suppose a teleological structure would support a duty?

It arises out of the roles an agent has within that teleological structure—e.g., a good dad, a good son, a good mother, a good police officer, a good firefighter, a good judge, etc.

I should remove it, because as a member of the community I should value the health of the community and the cleanliness of its water. My good is bound up in the community's good, just as its good is bound up in my good

I agree, but in the eudaimonic sense of ‘my good’ and not a modern egoistic sense. My good includes my roles—some of which I did not choose myself—and some of my roles as a moral agent are such that—being just, impartial, and properly respectful of life—I should care about the cleanliness of the water on the whole planet for the sake of the entire moral project (which is to properly respect life in a nutshell).

I don’t just have a duty to clean the water for my own ‘community’ (as you mean it) but, rather, to preserve the human good and the good of all life—don’t you agree? If you see a polluted stream that you knew with 100% certainty wouldn’t pose any threat to your community but would to another, then you think you have no moral obligation, ceteris paribus, to do something about it? The human good (in terms of as a whole) doesn’t bind you at all—just the communal good?

Telling a human that they are responsible for every human would be like telling a bee that it is responsible for every bee, as opposed to the bees of its hive and especially its queen.

Not quite, this is, again, the straw man that I am arguing that every human is obligated to do the impossible; but I am saying that human’s have duties to the human race—not just their own nation.

What is a community? It is something like a group of mutually self-sufficient people

A nation wouldn’t be a community then: they aren’t self-sufficient. They have to trade with other nations.

Communal obligations arise in virtue of that interdependence

I don’t think so. For you, would you say that if you didn’t require the resources of anyone else in your nation (and thereby were living completely self-sufficiently), then you have no obligations to help other people? What if you are filthy rich and completely self-sufficient and there are people that are starving? It seems like under your view there would be no duty or obligation to help them because there is no interdependence.

But that's circular, for you are appealing to your principle in order to establish duties.

I don’t remember how I initially presented the principle, but it might have been. What I am saying is that there are duties which arise out of the roles one has in a teleological structure, some of which can be morally relevant, and that those duties do extend to the entirety of the moral project [of respecting life—Justice and Fairness].

I was about to make a joke about the animal kingdom, and then you went on to talk about dutiful lions. So you think that teleology entails duties and lions have duties?
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If lions cannot deliberate then I'm not sure what a dutiful lion is.

I used that example of purpose in anticipation (;

If I am right that duties arise out of the roles derived from the teleological structure and duty is living in proper agreement with those roles and being dutiful is fulfilling one’s duties, then a lion is dutiful if the lion is fulfilling its roles within the teleological structure of being a lion—e.g., a good father lion, etc.

Voluntariness and choice are not the same thing—given that I take the Aristotelian approach here—and duty is just acting in alignment with one’s obligations; which can be done voluntarily without choice.

The chess player has a hypothetical imperative to follow the rules of chess, but unless he has a duty to play chess he has no duty to follow the rules of chess.

It is not a hypothetical imperative that the chess player is a good or bad chess player; nor that they are a dutiful or undutiful chess player. Just as much as a good human is not an expression of a hypothetical imperative.

If they are a chess player, then they are bound to follow the rules. Sure, they can decide to become a chess player or not, but that doesn’t make the goodness, badness, and dutifulness which is relative to that teleological structure a hypothetical imperative for a chess player.

If I take your argument seriously, then it sounds like all forms of moral relativism must express merely hypothetical imperatives.

Depends on the society. Obviously in 1830's America, to the masters. But the conversation changed. There's a general thrust in the West for egalitarianism and greater solidarity. We all seem to agree with this except when we don't

But according to you we don’t agree that it is actually better: we just subjectively like it more, whereas the masters subjectively liked their society more.

when perhaps it involves people of colour, Muslims, or women or trans folk, we might not consider solidarity relevant and call any consideration of such people 'woke'.

Here’s another gigantic issue with moral anti-realism: there’s no way to resolve these disagreements. The people, according to you, that are racist are no less right or wrong than those that want to eradicate it; so what exactly is one conveying to the racist when telling him he is wrong? Absolutely nothing but “Hey, I don’t like that you are doing that, and for some reason I think that you should abide by my feelings”.

But we all need to agree that this is the best way to achieve human flourishing or wellbeing or whatever you consider your foundational value to be

Which we can’t do in a rational way if there are no moral facts. That would explode into meaningless expressions of subjective dispositions.

Are there objective ways to reach a goal once you have arbitrarily chosen one? Perhaps. Is this what you are arguing for?

By “power-structure”, I was noting, and conceding, that you are absolutely right that human social structures are inherently hierarchical; and so those with the power dictate the rules (so to speak); and so there are human-interaction (social) dynamics to things that very well may not be orientated towards facticity; but I was also noting that there are moral facts, and these are the sort of facts which would dictate what a better world, a better social order, would look like. When people disagree ethically, they are either disagreeing about the truth of the matter or they are expressing meaningless non-objective dispositions they have. In the case of the latter, there may be legitimate disagreement if they subjectively agree on some maxim(s); but there’s not true disagreements because there are no facts. I say “I like vanilla ice cream”, you say “I don’t like vanilla ice cream”—who’s wrong? Neither.

I addressed that very concern: the evidence that humanity in general determines good acts, is sufficient reason to think the will as good.

I see. Let’s put it into a syllogism:

P1: What determines what is good grounds what is good.
P2: Agents determine what is good.
C: Agents are the grounds for what is good.

This is a equivocation between ontology and epistemology: that agents can come to know what is good, has no bearing in-itself on what actually is good.

Nothing about this explained why the will is good, am I missing something? You went from the will can be good to saying it cannot be determined what makes a will good. Again, I want to know why you believe that a will is good in any sense whatsoever. Why, e.g., can a habit not be good or bad?

E.g., I believe a will is good if it is virtuous; because objective goods are internal to the Teleological structure of the thing in question, morality pertains to the Teleological structure of agency, and so a good person will be any person which is fulfilling the Teleology of a person in a manner where they have excellences of habit which allow them to do so in the most ideal manner. A will, then, is good IFF it is comprised, habitually and deeply psychologically, of those excellences that allow them to realize and preserve those internal, objective goods. Viz., I can achieve the internal goods to being a human, which revolve around eudaimonia (as the chief good), IFF I have a will which habituates towards what allows me to do what a human was designed to do.

I would like some sort of elaboration, if possible, analogously, of what you saying makes the will good. If the answer is that we cannot say, then you have no reason to believe that a will can be good.

We don't need 'true' or objective morality to build a useful system.

To whom? To the slaves? To the masters?

According to you, it isn't actually wrong, e.g., to own slaves. All society is doing, is deciding that they don't like it anymore.

Who mentioned power-related structures?

That is what you are referring to without realizing it:

Collectively we arrive at right and wrong through an intersubjective agreement. In other words cultures arrive at values, from a myriad sources. And we know there will always be outliers. We know that the idea for who counts is a full citizen has varied over time, as culture and values change. In the West, slavery is no longer acceptable, but it is acceptable to exploit and underpay workers to keep the rich person's housework and maintenance done. We no longer criminalise and imprison gay people or trans people. Although some elements of society seem to want to punish them again. Our agreements are not necessarily permanent.

What you are noting is correct, insofar as it outlines how human social structures work, which are inherently power-structures, but the problem is that you gutted out the part where we are actually developing better social structures because they are ethically superior to previous ones. According to you, there is no true moral progress: apparently, abolishing slavery wasn't objectively better.

There are no facts we can access about values

We are talking about moral judgments, not value judgments.

I don't go looking for absolute truth or foundational guarantees in the world because I am not convinced such things exist.

I don't either.

No. I don't think you are following. I don't accept there are objective goods (your term). Society engages in an ongoing conversation about a 'code of conduct' and who counts as a citizen - this evolves and is subject to changes over time. Hence gay people are now citizens (in the West), whereas some years ago they were criminals.

1. Then, you are a moral anti-realist; and no one should take your view seriously; because all you are saying is that what is right or wrong is stance-dependent. So if, e.g., I want to do something you consider wrong, or others consider wrong, then there is absolutely no fact-of-the-matter that makes me wrong: I am just as right as you are (objectively speaking).

2. One can accept that there are objective goods AND that society is a power-related structure. The idea that some people are exhalted as heroes and those very same people criminals by others just highlights that humans are creating laws; and does not negate the fact that humans should be creating laws which abide by facticity. Under your view, those laws are non-factual; because there are no moral facts.

According to your posts, Aquinas says:

Again, no man justly punishes another, except one who is subject to his jurisdiction. Therefore it is not lawful for a man to strike another, unless he have some power over the one whom he strikes. And since the child is subject to the power of the parent, and the slave to the power of his master, a parent can lawfully strike his child, and a master his slave that instruction may be enforced by correction.

And:

It is lawful for anyone to restrain a man for a time from doing some unlawful deed there and then: as when a man prevents another from throwing himself over a precipice, or from striking another.

I am doing some interpretation work here, but here’s the two key points:

1. One cannot reprimand a person which one has no jurisdiction over.
2. One can reprimand a person which is doing something unlawful.

These two principles, which emerged from the two quotes above, are not compatible with each other, at least prima facie, because there could be cases, for principle 2, where a person is doing something unlawful, one must reprimand them (either in the sense of stopping them or punishing them), and one has no legal jurisdiction to do so; which would contradict the first principle.

An easy example is that kidnapping case I gave, where the citizen clearly has no jurisdiction, in any meaningful sense of that word, to reprimand nor have any authority over the perpetrator and yet they clearly have a moral duty to help. This leads me to:

If we want to go the route of justice taken in a general sense, then the good of aid must be due to them in virtue of their relation to the community or God
...
I think we could go the route of the community and say that one is acting as a kind of unofficial police officer who has care of the common good

Then we are not restricting ‘duty’ to its strict meaning as it relates to law—unless we are stretching it to the idea of Divine Law—and thereby we must admit that some duties can be relative to other Teleological structures than legal structures. This was my original point, which was negated by Aquinas’ view that one only has duty when relative to strict, legal structures.

The question, then, becomes: “what kinds of teleological structures can support duties?”. Before I dive into that, I want to address a couple other things first:

So the rape victim has a right which we must honor in view of their inclusion within our community. Is a person on the other side of the world a member of our community? Classically the answer is 'no', and to say 'yes' is to stretch the meaning of "community" unduly.

If I were to grant that one such set of moral duties relates to the teleological structure of ‘community’, then it seems to plainly follow that the entire human species, as a whole, is the highest of this type of structure as it relates to humans (or, if we want to add in Divine structures, then it would be the highest relative to human, natural structures). I don’t see how it would be a stretch to do so because the more universal the structure, the less immediate the duties are; and all you seem to be noting is that the universal, human community is much more distant to the citizen than the most localized community of which they are a member. This is true of the entire hierarchy, however, as a separate district from a citizen’s most local community is also very mediate (e.g., a state across the country of the US from a citizen of another state is also proportionally mediate relative to their local county or city).

Perhaps the argument is not that because they are so distant to each other that they are not proper communities but, rather, that there is no legal structure which subsumes each (nation) to each other; and so they are not a proper community. The problem with this is twofold: (1) we already established, by your own point, that legal structures are not the only teleological structures which can support duties (although I haven’t elaborated yet on what other kinds may exist) and (2) (more importantly) there are such legal structures (e.g., NATO, the UN, etc.). With respect to #2, there is no completely universalized legal structure yet, but humanity is obviously working towards it (with universal rights, UN judges, etc.).

We must oppose all the immorality that we can.
We must oppose all the immorality that we should.

I wouldn’t say that one must oppose all the immorality that they can per se: one should oppose all immorality that they can as it relates to their duties. The difference between us, is that I think of duties as relating to many teleological structures, whereas yours seems to be limited to legal structures.

So, what teleological structures can support duties? I would argue: all of them! Just as all teleological structures can and do support objective, internal goods to and for the given structure; so, too, does it house duties which relate to the preservation and realization of the purposes in those structures. E.g., just as there is such a thing as a good lion, there is such a thing as a dutiful lion.

Duty and (objective) goods are inextricably linked and relativistic to the Telos of the given structure. Then, it must be asked, which of these are morally relevant? Surely, e.g., a dutiful lion is not morally relevant, for the lion cannot rationally deliberate (in any meaningful sense). I would say, in short, that the directly morally relevant goods are the goods of moral agency; that is, the objective (and internal) goods to (and for) minds which are capable of rational deliberation as it relates to the Teleological structure immanent to such a mind qua personhood. Indirectly, all other teleological structures are morally relevant only insofar as they relate to this chief structure for persons. E.g., the virtues of the body, such as eating healthy, are morally relevant only insofar as they relate to sustaining the goods that are relative to the nature of a mind qua personhood; and, as such, are virtues that are relevant because they are required for the latter (such as needing to be healthy because one’s body is their temple).

For you, I would ask: how are you distinguishing which teleological structures can support duties and which can’t? Doesn’t, e.g., a chess player have certain chess duties (such as not cheating to win) even though they are not directly morally relevant duties?

Was it our intellectually piercing dialectic, or were they just bored with what they were doing?

Our conversation became so spectacular, that they couldn’t help themselves but join in (;

the goodness or badness of the will is a direct reflection on the worthiness of being content with one’s subjective condition, which is commonly called being happy, which is itself the prime condition for moral integrity

I understand that you are claiming that being worthy of happiness is directly related to having a good will; but I am asking what makes a will good?

The one willing an act in defiance of his principles would post hoc evaluate his will as bad, earning himself the title of immoral.

But what, under your view, makes those principles right? Someone, surely, can will in accordance with their principles, thereby gaining at least a shallow sense of happiness, without willing in accordance with what is right.

No I am not. Cultural relativism is a (family of) moral realist theory(ies) that posits, fundamentally, that objective goods are internal (i.e., relative) to societies or cultures—in terms of norms, values, or/and laws—whereas moral relativism is any moral theory which posits that objective goods are internal (i.e., relative) to something. Cultural relativism is a form of moral relativism; not all moral relativist theories are a form of cultural relativism.

IMHO, although cultural relativism is allegedly a form of moral realism, it reduces to a form of inter-subjectivism or "inter-non-objectivism" and thusly is a form of moral anti-realism (in actuality). It naturally makes sense for a cultural relativist to opt for anti-nationalism, because imposing moral law (or objective goods) that is only valid for one society can't be validly applied to another.

In a vaguer sense, I think people are moving more and more towards cultural relativism and truth relativism; and that's why many people find it upsetting to impose values onto other nations.

This didn't answer my question though: under your view, how does one evaluate what is a good or bad will? And why is the will the only thing that is truly morally relevant, and not habits?

How can we demonstrate that so-called low happiness (the version Aristotle might disapprove of in our interpretation of him) is qualitatively different?

Just look at the species. There are objectively better and worse ways for, e.g., a lion to be happy because we can observe how they are designed and recognize patterns in behavior that lead to deeper happiness for healthy lions. Humans are no different. We have had plenty of history to determine what tends to lead towards happiness and what doesn’t for humans.

Parsing happiness into "the right kind" and "the wrong kind" seems both futile and subjective.

Aristotle doesn’t: he doesn’t use the term ‘happiness’. Eudaimonia is not identical to the english word ‘happiness’. In english, it can refer vaguely to both superficial, hedonic happiness and the deeper, eudaimonic happiness. Aristotle simply says that the best is eudaimonia, which is ‘soul-living-well’, and everyone wants this that are healthy and sane merely in virtue of being an living being. If you don’t want to live well, ceteris paribus, then something’s wrong with you. Likewise, the objective goods to being a good human is such that, and necessarily such that, one fulfills their nature qua a human being; and this is why, necessarily, a human gets that deep sense of fulfillment from things that are in human nature to do (except in rare cases of unhealthy and ill people).

Aristotle himself supported slavery and likely believed it contributed to the "right kind" of happiness/flourishing

And he was wrong about that: so what?

This highlights the issue with attempting to parse happiness in such terms.

No it doesn’t. It highlights that not even philosophers are exempt from the coercion of their historical time period. This happens to every philosopher throughout all history: they make compromises so they don’t get killed or simply believe also themselves (due to how they were raised).

Probably better to just accept that humans act, and whether those actions are good or bad always depends on a contingent context—shaped by culture, language, and experience

I wouldn’t say “always”; but this is by-at-large true; and doesn’t negate Aristotle’s point.

The best we can do is reach an intersubjective agreement on morality and continuously scrutinize our actions to understand where our morality might lead us in an ongoing conversation.

This is self-undermining: if we assume there are objective goods but that, according to you, we cannot parse them properly, then we would be incapable of having an ‘ongoing conversation’ where we ‘scrutinize our actions’ objectively or intersubjectively. All it would be then, is baseless inter-subjective agreement; which is nothing but a moral anti-realist theory which should be disregarded immediately.

We must, in order to do ethics proper, be able to understand, however imperfectly, sufficiently these objective goods.

Like I said before, cultural relativism leads to anti-nationalism; but not all anti-nationalism is due to cultural relativism. I was noting cultural relativism specifically because it is prominent among the masses in the west.