I'm not. I'm flexible in that regard as previously discussed and apparently forgotten. Relative to me, relative to you, relative to us, relative to society, government, religion, Kantianism, whatever. It's all relative. And it is all properly made sense of through moral feelings, otherwise it's merely illusory nonsense.

And obviously, inter-subjectivity is just a bunch of individual subjectivities grouped together with subjective elements in common. Nothing much to do with objectivity. Yes, obviously a whole bunch of us feel the same way about murder. What of it? And please don't bring up a harmonious society, as that misses the point.

SLAM DUUU--- wait, what? Oh. :snicker:

More like an own goal.

It is the epitome of black and white thinking. It's not just ham-fisted, it's ham-brained.

In case you forgot, I am fine with inter-subjectivity. So much for your "slam dunk". :rofl:

No, it's Tim's, for one. That's where this stems from, as far as I can tell. See his comment on the previous page. He strongly suggested that the acts of Stalin and others like him were wrong in themselves, and that this is not nonsense. He has thus far failed to explain this. I rightly reject it as nonsense. Where do you stand on this?

You really should stop mischaracterising those you're debating. No one here is saying that nothing is wrong in the unqualified way that you just said it. I shouldn't have to point out that moral relativists and emotivists are not moral nihilists. We accept that there is right and wrong.

What's the point of a few Kantian's agreeing amongst themselves? That's not much of a debate, is it? I'm still waiting for the impossible, namely for someone to make sense of the nonsense of murder being wrong in itself.

Yes, he started talking about reason, not wrongness, but even then, wrong-according-to-the-categorical-imperative is clearly not wrong-in-itself. It's a good thing that there are people such as yourself with their eye on the ball.

It would be interesting, to say the least, to see you attempt to argue that I cannot condone murder without implicitly condoning my own murder, given that that is simply illogical, given that obviously I would just implicitly make an exception of myself. I predict that your argument would beg the question and contain at least one false premise.

If it goes something like this:

If the categorical imperative...

Then it will instantly fail for begging the question, because we most certainly are not all Kantians, and we most certainly do not all accept the categorical imperative, and Kant is most certainly not God, and his writings on the subject are most certainly not Biblical.

Indeed! Overcoming the initial prejudice, the superficial sense of absurdity, is a step in the right direction. It's not absurd at all when you actually think about it. When you actually think about it, the alternative is absurd. With my meta-ethical position, I can still say that murder is wrong, and that it's true that murder is wrong, and make sense. That is an advantage over your meta-ethical position, which can do the first two, but is committed to nonsense, so although you can say it is true, if it amounts to nonsense, it can't be. Moral absolutism is simply nonsense, it seems. How would you even attempt to explain it? Bearing in mind that dogmatic assertion is not explanation. You wouldn't, for example, accept someone dogmatically asserting that God exists, would you? You'd demand an explanation in support of the assertion, or else rightly dismiss it.

No, I wasn't referring to you. I don't know why you'd think that, given that you aren't childishly ignoring me. But thanks.

But Tim, please try to understand you have a giant burden that we simply don't have, and a giant burden that you've utterly failed to even come close to meeting. Dogmatism simply does not cut the mustard. Participants in this discussion do not have a burden to support what is obvious and agreed upon by both sides. So we do not have a burden to support that we feel strongly against murder, judge it to be wrong, and so on. It is your additional claims which require support, and after 43 pages, you still haven't provided any logical support. Going back through this discussion, one will find fallacy after fallacy from your side. It is frankly an embarrassment.

Dear oh dear. You disagree that all mental phenomena are subjective? Get outta town!

It's weird that he seemed to have no idea of the correct use of "objective", and that he didn't use logic, as others have done, in order to see why that definition would fail. Facts are clearly objective, and facts clearly don't change based on popular belief. Our planet didn't change from being flat to being spherical in sync with popular belief about it.

Ah, so you were trying to make the trivial appear profound. Yes, God is a thing. But a thing much more like an imaginary wizard than a dog named Sonny.

How amusing.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggghhhtt. :meh:

Sure. And I hang out with Frodo down in The Shire. We dance around for hours on end, then explode into a million pieces, and all the while Gandalph stares at us intently. Good old Gandalph. Aren't we a good wizard, Gandalph. Yes we are. Oh yes we are.

Which specific part do you disagree with or would like me to elaborate on? You've been very short and dismissive thus far, without saying anything helpful.

Hume is wrong/mistaken because he's that which contradicts the corresponding existentially dependent thinking about thought/belief yesterday and/or today and/or tomorrow about that which is/isn't the prior to that which precedes language and/or naming.

That's just the way it is. The Oracle has spoken. Turns out that wisdom sounds a lot like gibberish.

I already have very little reason to believe what you say about Hume. Comments like that aren't exactly helping.

Your mistake is to not understand that when he talks about reason in passages like that, he means reason alone as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains. Pure reason, not reasoning about passions you have experienced. The latter only supports his point that reason is the slave of the passions, as the reasoning follows suit to the passions. The passions are master. If you want to win over the master, you appeal to him as directly as possible. Appealing to the slave won't do any good, except by relaying the message to the master.

:rofl:

"Basically, there's a whole generation of people who've confused political correctness with health and safety legislation".

That could hardly be any clearer. He is very clearly suggesting that it's improper to call that political correctness. That is the confusion he's referring to!

You're missing my specific point, and his if you still disagree with me over this. I clearly wasn't talking about what he was doing with his whole set, or making any other point about his set which you might want to talk about instead. I was just talking about a very specific part of it, and in that very specific part he was doing exactly what I said, and it supports my point, as I've demonstrated. I'm not interested in your disjointed thoughts and misinterpretations. He was very clearly suggesting improper usage. That was what was made it so funny, and it wouldn't even make sense otherwise, let alone be funny. So I don't want to waste any more of my time arguing with you about that. He explicitly ruled out the examples as counting as political correctness, properly speaking, putting it down to confusion.

Okay, but in that case you're obviously mistaken, because he clearly says "Basically, there's a whole generation of people who've confused political correctness with health and safety legislation". It was the main punchline for that whole bit, and it was met with laughter. The joke wouldn't even make sense if these were genuine examples of political correctness. [Edited by moderator]

Yes, I remember it, and obviously none of those jokes would work if there wasn't a proper and improper usage of the term. He would just be met with silence and confused facial expressions. Fooloso4's argument has been demolished.

Yes, or that the mashed isn't the potato. Funnily enough, conflating two distinct things causes problems, but philosophy-types apparently love doing this.

The point you're making is true of only some but not all cases. In the discussion on morality, it was useful to distinguish between moral relativism and moral absolutism. That is, what is good relative to what so-and-so thinks and feels, or what is simply good. There is no simply good. It's all relative.

I wouldn't go as quite as far as to classify them as mentally ill, although there are certainly similarities. They're just bad at logic when it comes to that sort of thing. It can happen to anyone, including scientists. The experience simply isn't credible evidence of what they jump to the conclusion that it is. It is only credible evidence of that if there are no better explanations, but there always are, so they're fighting a losing battle. I'm intelligent enough not to make the unwarranted logical leap which they do.

They don't have to give up their illogical belief, but I think that they should be intellectually honest about what it isn't, and it isn't logical or credible.

There are a few people who are particularly knowledgeable about Kant on this forum, such as Janus and Moliere. No one else in particular comes to mind at present.

On a superficial level, it might indeed seem to someone like you as though I'm unfamiliar with "meaning is use". But I'm most certainly not, and the resolution here is simply to not take what I say on such a superficial level, but instead to make better use of your brain and be more charitable. A particular common usage isn't necessarily what is considered proper usage. Just ask those who say that "gay" is not an insult, for example. They obviously don't mean to deny that the word is commonly used that way. Rather, it's suggestive of proper and improper usage.

Again, it doesn't follow from the fact that people point to different things that there is no proper or improper usage. This implicit line of reasoning from you is invalid.

And I knows what I knows, and am knowingly far from humble about it. Big deal. I offer no apology if you find that offensive.

Of course it does, silly. Sheesh, your denialism is a real problem. You said that the analogy is a poor analogy, and the reasons you gave for this were bad reasons, so I set you straight. The analogy is a good analogy if you look at it in the right way, use it right, draw the right conclusions from it. Russell's teapot was being referenced and the lesson from that is a good one, so it's a good analogy if used right. You don't get to shift the burden of proof to others if you make the assertion that there exists a celestial teapot. Or rather, if you do, then you're not being reasonable.

God is not everything, if that's what you're suggesting. Everything is everything. I call things what they are in the clearest way. I gave you two options to turn a seeming falsehood into a truth: which is it? Illusion or trivial? Or are you sticking with a falsehood?

I'm glad, and my joke also serves a relevant purpose here, as it often does, which in this case is to reveal the benefits of what some would call political incorrectness or something similar, and the flaws of its opposite. I knew you'd appreciate it and not get all up in arms about me coming out with something like that.

Objectivity is not a scale or quantitative. It is not a matter of popularity or prevalence. That has already been refuted with a reduction to the absurd about slavery and Flat Earth Theory, so you should concede the point. You are either making a category error or talking about something else. Universality is quantitative: it means all. But universal or near universal doesn't mean or logically imply objectivity. That is your fallacy.

And there is no need to prove the obvious subjectivity in moral matters. That is not controversial at all, and is accepted on both sides. But you have a massive burden to prove that morality is objective. Do not try to shift the burden again or you'll trigger my wrath. There are rules about this for a reason. You don't get to just assume something controversial and sit back whilst goading others to argue against it. That is dishonorable. It is immoral. It is a vice. Please don't be a bad pupil. Learn from our previous encounters. You should explicitly state that you're either unable or unwilling to meet your burden if that is the case. That would be the intellectually honest thing to do. That would be the right thing to do. I am very strict on things like this, because it is very important. Far more important than relatively petty complaints about tone or insults. You can call me a cunt, but don't dare break my rules about intellectual honesty, the burden of proof, remaining on point, and so on. That's a cardinal sin. And I hope the Kantian in the background is taking note, because this is what philosophical maturity looks like.

False dichotomy. It is not a coincidence that we have noses. An explanation has been given which doesn't fit your false dichotomy. You're just coming up with ways to reject it because you can't handle the truth. Morality must be objective and God must exist, right? Why even bother trying to be rational if that's how you're approaching this? Why even enter into philosophical discussion about these things?

But it doesn't point to that at all, no more than it points to God or flying space teapots or luminiferous aether.

There is no more or less objective the way that I use the term. Something either is or isn't. And morality isn't. Nor is it universal. Near universal isn't universal, so if a moral judgement is only near universal, then it isn't universal. It helps to be logical. You should give it a try.

What don't you claim to understand this time? Or is this just another delaying tactic? If I understand it, then why don't you? He's saying that morality consists in preferences, and that preferences are a mental phenomenon, and that we're naturally predisposed to have certain preferences, which explains their prevalence. That is roughly analogous to saying that faces consist of facial features like a nose, and that facial features are bodily things, and that we're naturally predisposed to have a nose, which explains their prevalence.

I understand it because I have a certain level of intelligence. Just putting that out there.