That kind of reminds me of Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy. But that's not exactly what I meant by the historical methods -- Hegel is kind of passe in history writing circles and reading his history is more of historical interest in the sense of getting a feel for Hegel than it is for getting a feel for the history of philosophy.

Copleston has an excellent history if you're feeling like taking a large undertaking. It's long. But then, so is the history of philosophy.

How would we go about reasoning that knowing how the orange juice tastes is knowledge of something that exists prior to language? Orange juice certainly is not existentially dependent upon language. The act of tasting orange juice is not existentially dependent upon language either. So a language less creature can drink orange juice. Does drinking orange juice provide knowledge of how it tastes? Lots of creatures can drink orange juice.

Seems we need a criterion. — creativesoul

I am inclined to call this sort of thing knowledge. We gain knowledge by doing, by seeing, by exploring. And I was focusing on experience because it seems odd to me to call experience propositional -- I'm sure that experience is molded by language, but I wouldn't say that this knowledge existentially depends on language.

That is, the dog can know what orange juice tastes like too.

I'm not so certain about needing a criteria, either. I'm inclined to say that we know things, and from said knowledge we then build theories of knowledge. The criteria arrived at are the theories of knowledge, rather than the measure of judgment for what counts as knowledge or not.

Therefore, how do you create a narrative in philosophy that encompasses all the thoughts of different philosophers? Can that be done in any shape, manner, or form? — Posty McPostface

I prefer the historical method.

But maybe that's a bit misleading, because there are historical methods -- it's not an all-encompassing sort of discipline, but one which teases out the varied and conflicting narratives that arise in the passing of events. I tend to think that this is actually its strength; you get a feel for the many variances that are at play in reading conflicting accounts, and you get a sense for how much of it is a narrative more than How Things Actually Are.

Is there anything you would recommend doing that would foster a better outlook on these matters? — Posty McPostface

Usually I find that if I reflect on who I am that I share in the faults I find frustrating, and it tempers my anger or frustration; we are only human, and we are all faulty because of it.

In the passage you quote it's worth noting that these were the sorts of things Marcus would say to himself -- so it's not like he necessarily lived up to his code at every moment of his life. They were the sorts of things he would say to himself to help him live a better life and achieve some kind of contentment with the way things are.

Transcendentalism is too based in the whole romantic movement, I'd say, to count. There's a certain admiration for simple living that both share, but the motivations and cares of each are pretty divergent. In particular -- while both think of human nature, it seems to me that stoics wanted to live in accord with human nature, but transcendentalists wanted to go back, return or recover some forgotten human nature which was lost due to social structures. The whole nature/nurture distinction is missing in ancient ethics (as exemplified by Aristotle's phrase "Man is the political animal"), while it is central to romantic (stemming from Rousseau) thinking.

Well, I think @unenlightened has the right of it in the above with respect to the particular example you're giving.

The middle I had in mind was between truth and falsity, though. Or the notion of true contradictions. I should have probably said the law of non-contradiction, but I was just quickly typing off a response.

I would like to be able to say that an omnipotent being can create contradictions. But there's a fair point you're making here about our willingness.

Maybe I'd put it that God cannot contradict analytic truths, but that's not a restriction on God as much as it is a grammar of preference. But if he is omnipotent I'd say that he can create synthetic true contradictions -- something like the liar's paradox.

God doesn't conform to the law of the excluded middle -- after all, he is omnipotent. Why should he be contained by our preferred patterns of inference?

I don't think the tax status of an organization really changes the fact that there are already churches who are run by salaried professionals, just as there are for-profit hospitals which employ nurses that are dedicated care-givers out of a sense of duty to God and mankind.

I suppose my thought is that I find it hard to give a general answer. I see multiplicity. Even in current religions, of which we can participate and get a sense for, we get multiplicity -- gods are sometimes explanations, sometimes beings we relate to, sometimes beings we contrast with, sometimes principles or lofty ideals, sometimes that which we submit to, sometimes that which we rebel against. . .

Gods inhabit stories. They are in some way above humans. But to get a sense for any god the stories they inhabit are important to know, and there's a real sense in which unless you are a believer in such things you simply will not "get it". Gods are before sense -- either their stories coincide with sense or they do not, and this dualism isn't determined by the bounds of sense. Rather gods become sensical if believed in or they are obviously nonsensical if not.

Yes, exactly. It makes perfect sense. I'm not trying to disparage the practice of what works -- only to highlight how totalising capital really is, and also highlight that though the model is of an English factory worker in the 1800's it is a pretty generally applicable model that applies to commodities as ephemeral as "wins"

Think the observation is good. Some charities are in name only. I had in mind things like independent soup kitchens, urban foragers, food banks and volunteer teachers/counsellors. — fdrake

I guess it depends on the specifics. . . but the general form of capital seems to perpetuate itself, at least in my experience. Though I'll admit I'm generalizing from my own experiences here, so maybe there are some counter-examples that I haven't run across.

I used to work for a union, and even there membership was seen as a revenue base. It's not like people who worked for the union didn't care about working class struggles or anything like that. In fact, the money was chased because it was required in order to make wins and service the membership of the union. Rather, even in spite of all the best intentions the general sociopolitical structure was such that that you had to care about things like a capitalist does.

It's in that sense that I mean -- so even if it's not in-name-only, ala a corrupt organization, but even a well-run organization -- the form of capital imposes itself on the org.

I'd also note that not-for-profit is something of a in-name-only -- I'd say that the general critique of capital applies just as well to non-profit orgs in that they produce a commodity and sell it at a higher price than the use-value which goes into making said commodity; the individuals in charge of non-profit orgs do not make as much as their counterparts, but the motive remains the same: increase revenue greater than expenditures.

This is just the totalising nature of capital.

Not that non-profit orgs don't do good just because of this. They often do (as do for-profit orgs, for that matter) -- I just mean to point out that they are still a part of the larger sociopolitical system of capital.

I'll note that @Mariner has at least espoused polytheist views. I don't know where he is at now of course, but I've always read his posts on religion with interest because he is an honest soul who was searching through the questions of religion in a way that I find enlightening.

As to why: I suppose I would say, just to speak for myself for once rather than interpret others, that it is interesting. Isn't that the sort of thing philosophers really grab after?

It may not be universal. But then the truth conditions of propositions isn't interesting to all philosophers.

And so on. I don't think it's necessary to continue elaborating that point.

Then there is the fact that people do, in fact, believe such and such because of religion. Perhaps it is not of philosophic merit in the sense that these questions have been asked and talked about long enough that anyone interested can investigate the history -- but most people will not investigate the history. However, they will listen to arguments given and at least consider them, even if only to reject the arguments.

As an apatheist I wouldn't say that your nonchalance is dismissable. That would kind of defeat the point. I'm just trying to go some way as to show why the question might be interesting.

Indeed. The curse of bi-sexuality -- the indelible lust corrupting all friendships into an eternal tension between erotic pleasure and platonic love.

Not fair indeed. Poor me.

Well, it seems a bit strange to me whenever a human claims to know what God wants of not just themself, but of everyone -- but alas it's not logically inconsistent.

I'd say that the naturalistic fallacy is just as damaging to the theists case as it is to the atheists case -- or, at least, the open-question argument from which said fallacy derives. So before we were appealing to teleology to make a case for objective morality, right? But does it not make sense to ask "Is this end-goal good?"

And if it does make sense, then goodness must be something other than teleology, whether said teleology is rooted in evolutionary biology and psychology or whether that teleology is rooted in God.


On the other hand, Casebeer has an interesting take on the naturalistic fallacy and the open-question argument. I don't agree with it, but it is a kind of scientific response to your question that's worth reading.

And an athiest can believe that a human being has evolved to fulfill a particular role, making it justified objectively in their view. It appears objective to the person who holds to belief, whether it is objective or not, just as in the case of the theist.

I think if you apply the same standards to either belief you'll largely end up with the same outcome -- if one standard yields an objective morality for theism, it will probably do the same for atheism.

Given the diversity of sects within particular religions, and how they develop through time, I'd say that even with an explicit set of instructions we can go in different directions when it comes to details.

If you believe there is no God, you could believe that there is a teleological element to the universe, if that's all that's required to establish objective morality. It's not logically inconsistent, at least.

You could, say, observe that the universe is naturally ordered, and so there is a fair inference to say that the universe has a kind of telos to which it is going -- naturally. There's nothing inconsistent in this. You could follow Aristotle, in some way, and say that the human being has a natural telos which it should fulfill, and that this way of living is what ethics consists in, and is also independent of what an individual happens to believe. A person may happen to believe that drinking every day is good for them, but their telos wouldn't change because of that.

There is no objective morality with God, either, from what I can tell.

Another way to put what I'm getting at --


If all you have is assertion P -- that whatever Allah says is good -- then that's not much different from assertion Q -- that there are some true moral statements. Where you say "What if the sun and the moon were to not follow the will of Allah", another person could say "What if the sun and the moon were not to follow the laws of nature?"

The answer being -- all would be chaos.


So we can say that both positions meet this bare minimum threshold for being accepted as believed -- all you have to do is tell a story about your beliefs that ensures that everything would not fall into chaos, and repeat the foundational principle over and over again.

But, in fact, almost any position would meet this bare minimum threshold -- in which case it's not really all that different from saying that everyone can do whatever they want.

Is there anything in your belief that we should submit to Allah that makes it something more than what Ram wants? If you say Allah, then I'd submit that this isn't very convincing, at least -- not anymore convincing than the atheist who says he can be good without God in some sort of objective way without saying much more than that other than repeating himself. In which case, from my perspective at least, you're applying different standards to different claims and asking more from the atheist than what you ask from yourself.

You think atheists who are moral realists are not consistent -- but the only reason you give here is that because moral realism can only come from God. That is just begging the question in favor of your position -- that it is whatever God happens to say that makes something good or not. That's not a demonstration of inconsistency, that's a statement of implausibility: you find it difficult to believe that it's possible. But, at least logically speaking -- meaning the three basic rules of logic -- there is nothing logically inconsistent about the belief that God does not exist, and there is some moral statement that is true.

So logical necessity isn't at play. So far all that I can see from you is that as long as something comes from God, then it is good.

But why should I believe that? Why should you? What supports this belief?

So far it just seems like you're asserting it over and over again. So it would seem nothing supports this belief. It's just something you happen to believe. Which, from an outside perspective like my own, who does not accept this belief just because you said it, appears to be much like the belief of some dude making stuff up.

After all, it may be good to accept what God says. But surely it is possible that some dude just made that up. At the very least, if Allah is the one and true God, then there are religions that exist which amount to much the same thing -- since they do not submit to Allah, they submit to another God, clearly they are just following what some dude made up one time, rather than submitting to Allah.

What gives your belief more credence than what someone else is making up? Why should anyone accept it at all?

Now if we accept that atheism necesarily leads to moral relativism and we from that position construct an elaborate system of morality so as to fill a gap which is left empty without religion- obviously, we haven't disproven my thesis that atheism necessarily leads to moral relativism. I think you would need to both come up with some system of morality which is secular and which is not relative. However, I do not believe this is possible. I do not believe that you can demonstrate the validity of a secular system of morality- or even secular morality at all- in the same way as you can demonstrate a math problem. From a secular perspective, there is no reason why one should even accept morality as an end at all. There would be no reason not to follow Nietzsche in simply dispensing with morality. If you can demonstrate an objective, secular morality which disproves moral relativism that you can demonstrate like math or science- I would like to see it. — Ram

Well, it really depends on what you want from a demonstration I think. I believe I have a hint at what you're wanting from a moral system when you say . . .

Morality is tested when times are hard. It is therefore necessary that morality has a firm basis which can withstand tests. A morality with a weak basis will be blown away when the wind blows. — Ram

There are clearly atheists who believe they have such a basis. Moral realism is a position which at least a plurality of atheists hold. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I've come across it enough to see that there are those who believe as much. In fact I'd say that as long as there exists a person who believes two things to be true they'd count -- as long as there exists a person who believes God does not exist, and believes that at least one statement is both a moral statement and true, then I'd be inclined to say that it's at least possible to hold both beliefs.

But you want a demonstration, and not just an example. And you're interested in not just consistency, but whether or not the foundational principle of morality is strong, rather than weak.

Am I right so far?

If so -- it'd be helpful to hash out what counts as a demonstration, what makes a moral foundational principle strong rather than weak, and how what you currently believe actually fits those criteria in a way that does not assume its conclusion.

Because if submitting to Allah is good because submitting to Allah is good then clearly no atheist will be able to meet that criteria, but it will also just sort of assume the belief from the outset in a way that rational disagreement or discussion couldn't take place.

how someone would purposefully deceive themselves? I assume not. — Pattern-chaser

The latter is what I was considering. I'm not as interested, here, in determining how we might know others -- only the conditions under which one might lie to themselves. It could be that said conditions are not easily determinable due to practical considerations.

What is a basis?

noun, plural ba·ses [bey-seez] /ˈbeɪ siz/.
1. the bottom or base of anything; the part on which something stands or rests.
2. anything upon which something is based; fundamental principle; groundwork. — Ram

I'm guessing that you're not referencing the first definition, because that's just silly.

But if it's the latter then it seems to me that all we need is a single example of a moral theory that is objective, and secular, to counter what you're saying.

By objective you seem to mean...

Morality has to do with right and wrong. You cannot deny that there is right and wrong and have a basis for morality. — Ram

So we must have some fundamental principle of morality that is both secular, and believes there is a right and a wrong -- we might say something akin to the way we know that 1 and 1 make 2, regardless of our belief, we can also know that there are moral propositions which are true regardless of what we believe about them. If we had a theory that fit both of those requirements then it would seem that we could conclude that it is at least not necessarily the case that secular beliefs imply subjective morality.

Yes or no?


I am not degrading you or asking my questions rhetorically. I'm laying a groundwork for meaningful disagreement. I surely disagree with your assertion, but that's neither here nor there. Disagreement isn't interesting unto itself -- else you just end up re-asserting what you already believe in increasingly strong tones.

What's interesting is how and why we disagree -- hence why I'm asking questions about what are seemingly simple words. But usually they are not so simple or innocuous as they might seem at first blush.

One way to acquire knowledge of orange juice is to taste the orange juice -- then you'd know how the orange juice tastes.

There is simply no secular basis for morality.

Morality from a secular position is necessarily subjective. — Ram

What's a basis? Is it the same thing as saying that morality is objective? So that your second statement is a restatement of the first?

And why would a secular position entail necessary subjectivity? Why not simply say that a secular morality is subjective? What's the difference?


I don't think that atheists are quite as homogeneous as you believe. As if you could just read Sartre and then know what all consistent atheists should believe.

I wouldn't say that it goes either way just because I've heard stories both ways -- sometimes it goes away, and the reasons for that vary (from constant medication to a quick visit to talk therapy); and sometimes it does not, and you need to either always go through talk therapy or medication or both.

Coping only works if you feel like coping is working. For myself, at the moment, I feel that it is mostly because I know I don't exhibit most of the symptoms of depression very often. I can tell when a thought or feeling comes from depression but because I can tell it I am able to say to myself "OK, this is depression, it will pass. I know why it is coming, I know what I would rather be different, but for now I know this will go away"

But if you don't feel like it? Then you try something else.

I suppose I was lucky in the clinic I went to -- they wanted to start with talk therapy but I told them I wanted medication and they were open to it. I kept doing talk therapy with medication but eventually it got to a point where the talk therapy just seemed kind of dumb. It wasn't that I was unwilling to try, it's just that the hour or so that we spent together was basically a conversation you'd have at a bar. I knew there were things I need(ed) to work through, but I knew that the environment wasn't good for me to work through me. I'm the sort of person that works through things on my own time.

But that's just me. For you -- you have to experiment, notate what works, and keep trying other things.

I should say that I think medication is great. That's what works for me. Though there is variability, the common prescriptions work great -- I started with the basic exercise, diet, sleep, etc., and eventually I landed in a place where that was not enough. But medication got me out of the deepest slump and gave me the opportunity to work through what I needed to. It's not over yet for me, but it's also much better than it has been.

For myself I suspect that what @Hanover stated earlier will always be true. Some illnesses are curable, and others are not -- but manageable. Like Diabetes. I suspect my depression is like that, though you never know -- maybe you will come across something. It's just something I've come to terms with --- that possibility. And even if that's the case then I know -- at least now -- I can live with it.

But for you? Hard to say. All my conversations about depression have lead me to believe that while there are similar terms to describe the symptoms the experiences with depression are just so unique, and our knowledge is so limited, that we aren't really able to give a definitive answer to what helps. So it's best to listen to everything, and then experiment in the method I said before.

I honestly don't know.

It could be complexity. It could just be cultural interest in curing bodily impairments (vision being one of the primary metaphors of western philosophy). It could be pure happenstance; we just came across the right sorts of things for bone beforehand.. And it could be that the mind is incurable in the same way that bones are; After all -- it is an analogy.

I've begun to play with the idea that the mind is actually totally different from the body ala Descartes (though my background precludes such thoughts), and so would not be subject to treatment in the medical sense that we are used to. Perhaps it just isn't an object that can be made to work in the manner that most of us would like, whereas a bone, for most of us, can be made to work in the manner most of us would like. (though, i will note here, that for me thinking of depression in the same manner as a broken bone has helped a lot). I guess that's why I said in one of your other threads about depression that you really just have to experiment with anything -- or at least that's what I did -- to finally find what works for you. While the description seems to be similar enough across time, or you can at least see a thread, the cure seems to vary incredibly.

If you're ready to just not feel like that then just be ready to change things you haven't thought of changing before. This is semi-scientific in the sense that you do record what does what so you can remember and see what's happening. And if it just ain't working then you try something else. Rinse and repeat

@Posty McPostface -- Beebopping around the 'net I came across this interesting paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4314947/

reviewing the history of the term "melancholia"

What is not included here is the methods of treatment; it's only the conceptual diagnosis through time.

As for depression's interaction with evolution -- there are many, many diseases that are not effected by evolutionary pressures. In fact, some diseases live on because of evolutionary pressures (since they are caused by living organisms). Even if something is genetic, and we term it a disease, that does not then mean that this will even have an influence on our species' ability to reproduce.

what is it about depression that makes it so enduring? — Posty McPostface

Maybe a bit of a boring answer, or seemingly too obvious -- but my first thought is that whatever is causing depression must still be there in order for depression to endure, or the depression simply hasn't been healed.

I often analogize depression to broken bones -- because broken bones are painful, they take a long time to heal, they need to be set right in order for them to heal right, and you can live with a broken bone that has healed wrong. Unfortunately we don't know as much about the mind as we do about bones, so the process to healing isn't as straightforward. So just imagine living in a world without knowledge of bones, and how having a broken one would pretty much heal in wrong ways all the time -- you'd still be in pain then, and you could deal with the pain in the sense that you'll wake up the next day, but you'll live with pain the rest of your life until it is healed correctly.

I think that's why depression is so enduring. Because we may be able to recognize it, identify it, talk about it -- but we do not have the same kind of knowledge of minds as we do of bones.

True enough. I suppose my thinking was that in a way this double spectrum -- in the sense that you can go from left to right and right to left but never remove entirely one or the other -- is characteristic of language as a whole. So it's not like dance isn't language or that math isn't language, but rather that all language falls somewhere on this spectrum between expression and pragmatics and the middle ground is something like our everyday usage.

What happens when you drop out language from your gradation?

So we have --

Dance:Gesture:Poetry:Philosophy:Math

Perhaps a bit heavy on the left and missing some terms -- but I think I agree with what you are saying if we treat the gradation as a characterization of language. (maybe "everyday" would populate the middle?)


How do you feel about that?

I'm not convinced that poetry attempts to be gestural. There are many formal techniques in poetry -- and those formal techniques are even language-specific, in some cases; Especially as we go back to ancient poetry which were more formalized than a lot of modern poetry is.

One aspect of poetry that does seem gestural is in its use of imagery. A good poet highlights what is specific in a scene or brings images to the imagination through the use of language. But there is usually a reason behind said imagery -- it is metaphoric, or conveys a feeling. Poetry is also often self-referential, especially as we get into modern poetry. It draws from other poets and often comments on poetry itself.

Then there is the arrangement of words to create a (langue-dependent -- i.e. romantic differs from germanic) cadence using the words themselves. This is purely phonic at the formal level, but can also evoke certain emotions or indicate turns within a poem -- such as the rhyming couplet which closes a Shakespearean sonnet.

This isn't to say that poetry is mathematical, but rather that I'd say it shares in the mixture of gesture and math that language has.

Not sure how far you want to go down this path. I'm just hesitant to call poetry an attempt at gestural language. Though I do agree when you say that it isn't subject to pragmatics -- but to me that seems to support my point here. Aren't gestures pragmatic?

Alright, so if there were a law, say, that people could declare their gender-identity and it was written down then you'd accept the claims being made?

Not at all.

Thus far you believe there must be some objective, measurable entity you can independently verify in order to take the claim that someone's identity is what it is seriously. I'm saying that this is inconsistent with how we do, in fact, determine someone else's identity. So rather than focus on the contentious claim I'm going to other parts of identity that you are likely to accept, such as nephewhood.

How do you determine nephewhood? You wouldn't focus on genes here for the simple fact that someone can be adopted into a family. So that leaves, in your list of acceptable criteria, things people do for each other and time.

What actions with respect to time lets you know if someone you met is the nephew of someone else?

The amount of time and types of things you do for each other can be said to be physical quantities. I could even say that feelings are physical as well, but I don't like to use those incoherent terms, "physical" and "mental". Everything is information. Your feelings inform you of the state of your body and can say that they are the relationship between mind and body. Relationships are a process. Nothing is either physical or mental. It is all process/information. — Harry Hindu

The important thing here is that these aren't measurable quantities that you can independently verify.

Definitely!

Are relationships not established over time, with more time implying a deeper relationship? And what about the actions taken to maintain the relationship? Caring for a child that you adopted is what makes it a relationship as well. Just look at all the things that define your relationship with the people in your life, and how each relationship is different, and they are different as a result of the amount of and kind of things you do for each other. It has to do with the amount and types of actions you do with someone else, along with any physical relationship that might exist. — Harry Hindu

This is closer I think. But what differs here is that these aren't physical quantities which are measured. There is a qualitative aspect to a relationship, something which isn't definable in the sense that a biological relationship is. You could get the gist across to someone about your relationship between yourself and your son, but if they don't have that experience then there is something missing.

It's worth noting here, too, that feelings of kinship also vary with time and culture. But that doesn't make them meaningless, nonsensical, or entirely undefinable. It does, however, mean that there isn't going to be some trans-historical account of kinship, or some objective measurable physical criteria which will enable you to independently establish kinship. At some point you just have to ask people and believe them.